Strength and success; they are above morality, above criticism. It seems then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it.

Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead. His effect is the only evidence of his life. While there remains even a plaintive memory, a person cannot be cut off, dead. And he thought, “It’s a long slow process for a human to die. We kill a cow, and it is dead as soon as the meat is eaten, but a man’s life dies as a commotion in a still pool dies, in little waves, spreading and growing back toward stillness.

I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody.

Change was everywhere. People were gone, or changed, and that was almost like being gone.

Guys like us got nothing to look ahead to

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

Perhaps the best conversationalist in the world is the man who helps others to talk.