It seemed clear that wars were not made by generations and their special stupidities, but that wars were made instead by something ignorant in the human heart

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.

Nothing endures. Not a tree. Not love. Not even death by violence.

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.

As I said, this was my sarcastic summer. It was only long after that I recognized sarcasm as the protest of people who are weak.

I knew that part of friendship consisted in accepting a friend’s shortcomings, which sometimes included his parents.

What I mean is, I love winter, and when you really love something, then it loves you back, in whatever way it has to love.