Before the mind snaps, or the heart breaks, it gather itself like a clock about to strike. It might even be said one pulls himself together to disintegrate.

Let us hope, I prayed, that a kind Providence will put a speedy end to the acts of God under which we have been laboring.

"You don't believe in God," I said to Stein. "God is a word banging around in the human nervous system. He exists about as much as Santa Claus." "Santa Claus has had a tremendous influence, exist or not." "For children." "Lots of saints have died for God with a courage that's hardly childish." "That's part of the horror. It's all a fantasy. It's all for nothing."

Pain is the question mark turned like a fishhook in the human heart.

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

Life is a zoo in a jungle.

I wondered whether any woman could be happy with a man who says 'folderol'.