This was the tree, and it seemed to me standing there to resemble those men, the giants of your childhood, whom you encounter years later and find that they are not merely smaller in relation to your growth, but they are absolutely smaller, shrunken by age. In this double demotion the old giants have become pygmies while you were looking the other way.

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.

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.

The next major advance in the health of the American people will be determined by what the individual is willing to do for himself.

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

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

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.