All of them, all except Phineas, constructed at infinite cost to themselves these Maginot Lines against this enemy they thought they saw across the frontier, this enemy who never attacked that way-if he ever attacked at all; if he was indeed the enemy.

So the more things remained the same, the more they changed after all. Nothing endures. Not love, not a tree, not even a death by violence.

So the more things remain the same, the more they change after all.

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.

I did no know everything there was to know about myself, and knew that I did not know it.

My father was in the coal business in West Virginia. Both dad and mother were, however, originally from Massachusetts; New England, to them, meant the place to go if you really wanted an education.

It was demeaning to scrape affection from virtually everyone you encountered. That was immature.