To read a novel is a difficult and complex art.

I am obsessed at nights with the idea of my own worthlessness, and if it were only to turn a light on to save my life I think I would not do it. These are the last footprints of a headache I suppose. Do you ever feel that? - like an old weed in a stream. What do you feel, lying in bed?

Walden - all his books, indeed - are packed with subtle, conflicting, and very fruitful discoveries. They are not written to prove something in the end. They are written as the Indians turn down twigs to mark their path through the forest. He cuts his way through life as if no one had ever taken that road before, leaving these signs for those who come after, should they care to see which way he went.

For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself.

more and more I come to loathe any dominion of one over another; any leadership, any imposition of the will.

I have lost friends, some by death...others by sheer inability to cross the street.

I have had my vision.