Of all the conditions we experience, solitude is perhaps the most misunderstood.

All innocent mechanisms are muddied up with experience. Children become less and less translucent. Layers of guile and suspicion grow. It's the law of paternal disenchantments.

You didn’t understand what he was saying, until he kissed you. It was a kiss of such complicity, of such uncomplicated sympathy, that you felt for the first time not alone in your suffering.

I'll tell you this, lad: A tattoo says more of a fellow looking at it than it can do of the man who's got it on his back.

We should not forget that when we limp away afflicted through the spirit, it is not to the factory gates or to the corporate steps we pilgrimage. Instead we go to the sea for its salt. We find shade under the sycamores on the great avenues. Or we go to the rivers where water tells us modestly of its own sickness.

Of all the conditions we experience, solitude is perhaps the most misunderstood.

Those partial to drink were hiding faults and dishonesty. They were sloppy souls, even the ones with pleasant manners and fine noses.