You've got to work with your mistakes until they look intended. Understand?

In short, everything about his life was different for him at the bottom of that well.

When a reader finishes a wonderful story and lays it aside, he should have to pause for a minute and collect himself.

Life and death matters, yes. And the question of how to behave in this world, how to go in the face of everything. Time is short and the water is rising.

Then I said something. I said, Suppose, just suppose, nothing had ever happened. Suppose this was for the first time. Just suppose. It doesn't hurt to suppose. Say none of the other had ever happened. You know what I mean? Then what? I said.

All of us, all of us, all of us trying to save our immortal souls, some ways seemingly more round about and mysterious than others. We are having a good time here. But hope all will be revealed soon.

And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.