Like a flame is real enough, isn't it, while it's burning?-even if there's a time it goes out?

Cherie, keep walking. Shut your eyes. We are headed for the bridge. We are going to cross it.

Each genre exerts a considerable spell, as a kind of "form" to be filled, as a Shakespearean sonnet is filled.

It must happen to everyone. The last time you make love, you can't know it will be the last.

Running! If there's any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can't think of what it might be.

The joyous fulfillment of your sex : the sacred duties of beloved wife, and helpmeet, and mother. In opposition to the vulgar and mercantile hurly-burly of the great world, the idyllic pleasures of the domestic hearth-the which, I firmly believe, make of one small room an everywhere, indeed; and provide us with that small measure of bliss, which is, if we are greatly fortunate, and deserving, Our Lord's promise to us, of the Heaven to come.

It makes me angry sometimes, it's a visceral thing--how you come to despise your own words in your ears not because they aren't genuine, but because they are; because you've said them so many times, your 'principles,' your 'ideals'--and so damned little in the world has changed because of them.