...when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.

But I replied that what made being alive almost worthwhile for me, besides music, was all the saints I met, who could be anywhere. By saints I meant people who behaved decently in a strikingly indecent society.

There are lots of things worth doing that are no way to make a living. They are agreeable ways to make a more agreeable life.

Hardly anyone in the world is an American

All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.

You don't do art for any other reason than to help your soul grow.

Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward - and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.