A little instruction in the elements of chartography—a little practice in the use of the compass and the spirit level, a topographical map of the town common, an excursion with a road map—would have given me a fat round earth in place of my paper ghost.

The first meal was an object lesson of much variety. My father produced several kinds of food, ready to eat, without any cooking, from little tin cans that had printing all over them.

The past was only my cradle, and now it cannot hold me, because I am grown too big.

You heard on all sides that the brightest Jewish children were turned down if the examining officers did not like the turn of their noses.

[I began to unload] the pyramid of honors, civic and literary, which had been heaped on me by the headlong process of rewarding a popular success. One day, I sat down and wrote a wholesale lot of letters of resignation. When I finished, I didn't belong to a single authors club or patriotic society. I was myself again, whatever that was.

A long past vividly remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you would run.

The apex of my civic pride and personal contentment was reached on the bright September morning when I entered the public school.