Self-parody is the first portent of age.

From him to the stars, in all directions, there was only silence and emptiness.

I remember that the single most vicious letter I ever read was the letter Hemingway wrote Scribners when they asked him to give a blurb for From Here to Eternity. It's there, in the Selected Letters for all to read, an example of a once great writer at his very worst. I doubt that he ever forgave Scribners for publishing James Jones in the first place. War, as Hemingway saw it, belonged to him.

Occasionally the very youngness of the young moved him to charity--they had no sense of the swiftness of life, nor of its limits. The years would pass like weeks, and loves would pass too, or else grow sour.

The only bookstore I had was the paperback rack at the drugstore.

I hate rude behavior in a man,' he explained in his quiet, unassuming drawl. 'I won't tolerate it.' He politely tipped his hat, and rode away.

Books can accommodate the proximity of computers but it doesn't seem to work the other way around. Computers now literally drive out books from the place that should, by definition, be books' own home: the library.