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.

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

I think the whole glory of writing lies in the fact that it forces us out of ourselves and into the lives of others.

If I can write everything out plainly, perhaps I will myself understand better what has happened.

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.

You must try to forget all you have learned,” said the old man. “You must begin to dream. From this time on you must shut your ears to the roaring of the voices.