But 'Thou mayest!'! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

For the world was changing, and sweetness was gone, and virtue too. Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost- good manners, ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies anymore, and you couldn't trust a gentleman's word.

We could live offa the fatta the lan'.

[He] fell right into the oldest conviction in the world-- that the girl you are in love with can't possibly be anything but true and honest.

The Mojave is a big desert and a frightening one. It’s as though nature tested a man for endurance and constancy to prove whether he was good enough to get to California.

What some people find in religion a writer may find in his craft...a kind of breaking through to glory.