...the dark ancestral cave, the womb from which mankind emerged into the light, forever pulls one back - but...you can't go home again...you can't go...back home to the escapes of Time and Memory. You Can't Go Home Again
Thomas WolfeIs this not the true romantic feeling; not to desire to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping you.
Thomas WolfeThere came to him an image of manโs whole life upon the earth. It seemed to him that all manโs life was like a tiny spurt of flame that blazed out briefly in an illimitable and terrifying darkness, and that all manโs grandeur, tragic dignity, his heroic glory, came from the brevity and smallness of this flame. He knew his life was little and would be extinguished, and that only darkness was immense and everlasting. And he knew that he would die with defiance on his lips, and that the shout of his denial would ring with the last pulsing of his heart into the maw of all-engulfing night.
Thomas WolfeAmerica - it is a fabulous country, the only fabulous country; it is the only place where miracles not only happen, but where they happen all the time.
Thomas WolfePerhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America -- that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement. At any rate, that is how it seemed to young George Webber, who was never so assured of his purpose as when he was going somewhere on a train. And he never had the sense of home so much as when he felt that he was going there. It was only when he got there that his homelessness began.
Thomas Wolfe