In the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were truths and they were all beautiful.

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

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

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

I had a world, and it slipped away from me. The War blew up more than the bodies of men....It blew ideas away.

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.

There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood.