There was no harm in taking aim, even if the target was a dream.

But something held me back. Perhaps I was stopped by that level of feeling, deeper than thought, which contains the truth.

I began to know that each morning reasserted the problems of night before, that sleep suspended all but changed nothing, that you couldn’t make yourself over between dawn and dusk.

Never say you are five feet nine when you are five feet eight and a half" was the first one I encountered. Another was, "Always say some prayers at night because it might turn out that there is a God.

I felt that I was not, never had been and never would be a living part of this overpoweringly solid and deeply meaningful world around me.

It is a sad day when one looks back and sees that his largest regrets have become some of the most integral elements of his dreams.

But I was used to finding something deadly in things that attracted me; there was always something deadly lurking in anything I wanted, anything I loved.