There was a tacit understanding between them that 'liquor helped'; growing more miserable with every glass one hoped for the moment of relief.

Sooner or later... one has to take sides. If one is to remain human.

Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too.

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.

...every monologue sooner or later becomes a discussion.

A writer doesn't write for his readers, does he? Yet he has to take elementary precautions all the same, to make them comfortable.

Pity is cruel. Pity destroys.