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

[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.

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

You went up to be examined with the other Jewish children, your heart heavy about that matter of your nose.

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

A characteristic thing about the aspiring immigrant is the fact that he is not content to progress alone. Solitary success is imperfect success in his eyes. He must take his family with him as he rises.

His struggle for a bare living left him no time to take advantage of the public evening school. In time he learned to read, to follow a conversation or lecture; but he never learned to write correctly; and his pronunciation remains extremely foreign to this day.