Friends you have, people you love, die and are born again.

From the place by the railing at the edge of the tracks on the summer evening I return across the city to my own room. I am vividly aware of my own life that escaped the winter on the boat. How many such lives I have lived. Then I only made a dollar and a half a day and now I sometimes make more than that in a few minutes. How wonderful to be able to write words. ... Again I begin the endless game of reconstructing my own life, jerking it out of the shell that dies, striving to breathe into it beauty and meaning. ... I wonder why my life, why all lives, are not more beautiful.

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

I think that those of us who are what are called intellectuals make a terrible mistake in overvaluing the yen we have for the arts, books, etc. There is a sweet, fine quality in life that has nothing to do with this, and more and more I find myself valuing myself with those people.

In youth there are always two forces fighting in people. The warm unthinking little animal struggles against the thing that reflects and remembers

I feel that I am writing out of a full life. I am a rich man, rich in men known, in adventures had. I am rich with living.

Friends you have, people you love, die and are born again.