and the stars were icicles of mockery

What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.

The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream.

and nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old

I'd also gone through an entire year of celibacy based on my feeling that lust was the direct cause of birth which was the direct cause of suffering and death.

In my medicine cabinet, the winter fly has died of old age.

Don't tell them too much about your soul. They're waiting for just that.