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.

A man needs a purpose for real health.

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

It may be life is only worthwhile at moments. Perhaps that is all we ought to expect.

The machines men are so intent on making have carried them very far from the old sweet things.

I am a lover and have not found my thing to love. That is a big point if you know enough to realize what I mean. It makes my destruction inevitable, you see. There are few who understand that.

It was a cold day but the sun was out and the trees were like great bonfires against gray distant fields and hills.