Never dreaming, was I, poor Jack Duluoz, that the soul is dead. That from Heaven grace descends . . . No Doctor Pisspot Poorpail to tell me; no example inside my first and only skin. That love is the heritage, and cousin to death. That the only love can only be the first love, the only death the last, the only life within, and the only word . . . choked forever.

Mainly I've been back to my books and writings and being nice and quiet and lazy. As I'm writing this, the radio says there's a foot of snow falling on Long Island. I really love snow and wish I could take a long walk in it right now.

Ah, it was a fine night, a warm night, a wine-drinking night, a moony night, and a night to hug your girl and talk and spit and be heavengoing.

I ate apple pie and ice cream—it was getting better as I got deeper into Iowa, the pie bigger, the ice cream richer. There were the most beautiful bevies of girls everywhere I looked in Des Moines that afternoon—they were coming home from high school—but I had no time for thoughts like that…So I rushed past the pretty girls, and the prettiest girls in the world live in Des Moines.

You can't teach the old maestro a new tune.

She brooded and bit her rich lips: my soul began its first sink into her, deep, heady, lost; like drowning in a witches' brew, Keltic, sorcerous, starlike.

If you own a rug you own too much.