I go about looking at horses and cattle. They eat grass, make love, work when they have to, bear their young. I am sick with envy of them.

The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.

...she thought that something unexpressed in herself came forth and became a part of an unexpressed something in them.

On the trees are only a few gnarled apples that the pickers have rejected. They look like the knuckles of Doctor Reefy's hands. One nibbles at them and they are delicious. Into a little round place at the side of the apple has been gathered all its sweetness. One runs from tree to tree over the frosted ground picking the gnarled, twisted apples and filling his pockets with them. Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apples.

The lives of people are like young trees in a forest. They are being choked by climbing vines. The vines are old thoughts and beliefs planted by dead men.

The writer, an old man with a white moustache, had some difficulty getting into bed.

What's wrong with this egotism? If a man doesn't delight in himself and the force in him and feel that he and it are wonders, how is all life to become important to him?