Acting might bring on emotional exhaustion, but writing tired your brains out. Writing led to depression and insomnia and walking around all day with a haggard look.

if you wanted to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone.

In avoiding specific goals he had avoided specific limitations. For the time being the world, life itself, could be his chosen field.

Know what we did, Lucy? You and me? We spent our whole lives yearning. Isn't that the God damndest thing?

Why did everything always change when all you wanted, all you had ever humbly asked of whatever God there might be, was that certain things be allowed to stay the same?

Intelligent, thinking people could take things like this in their stride, just as they took the larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs. Economic circumstances might force you to live in this environment, but the important thing was to keep from being contaminated. The important thing, always, was to remember who you were.

Being alone has nothing to do with how many people are around.