It was hard to remember in the heavy and sensual clarity of these mornings; I forgot whom I hated and who hated me. I wanted to break out crying from stabs of hopeless joy, or intolerable promise, or because these mornings were too full of beauty for me, because I knew of too much hate to be contained in a world like this.

There are special, strange gifted people in the world and they have to be treated with understanding

the scornful force of his tone turned the word into a curse

As I walked briskly out the road the wind knifed at my face, but this sun caressed the back of my neck.

Looking back now across fifteen years I could see with great clarity the fear I had lived in, which must mean that in the interval I had succeeded in a very important undertaking: I must have made my escape from it.

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.

I lost part of myself to him then, and a soaring sense of freedom revealed that this must have been my purpose from the first: to become a part of Phineas.