I saw my bulky person in the windows of the passing storefronts and wondered, when will that man there find himself to be loved?

I will never be a leader of men, and neither do I want to be one, and neither do I want to be led. I thought: I want to lead only myself.

Why were you feeling low? Why does anyone? It creeps up on you from time to time.

Your laughter is like cool water to me," I said. I felt my heart sob at these strange words, and it would not have been hard to summon tears: Strange. " "You are so serious all of a sudden," she told me. "I am not any one thing," I said. (137)

I had never been with a woman for longer than a night, and they had always been whores. And while throughout each of these speedy encounters I tried to maintain a friendliness with the women, I knew in my heart it was false, and afterward always felt remote and caved in. I had in the last year or so given up whores entirely, thinking it best to go without rather than pantomime human closeness.

...things I had come to find humor in would make your honest man swoon.

I lay in the dark thinking about the difficulties of family, how crazy and crooked the stories of a bloodline can be.