I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straightening shyness that assails one.

Trips to fairly unknown regions should be made twice; once to make mistakes and once to correct them.

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved.

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

Once Charley fell in love with a dachshund, a romance racially unsuitable, physically ridiculous, and mechanically impossible. But all these problems Charley ignored. He loved deeply and tried dogfully.

Look at them. There are your true philosophers. I think that Mack and the boys know everything that has ever happened in the world and possibly everything that will happen. I think they survive in this particular world better than other people. In a time when people tear themselves to pieces with ambition and nervousness and covetousness, they are relaxed. All of our so-called successful men are sick men, with bad stomachs, and bad souls, but Mack and the boys are healthy and curiously clean. They can do what they want. They can satisfy their appetites without calling them something else.

One man was so mad at me that he ended his letter, "Beware. You will never get out of this world alive."