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.

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

Always say some prayers at night because it might turn out that there is a God.

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.

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