The days of my youth, as I look back on them, seem to fly away from me in a flurry of pale repetitive scraps like those morning snow storms of used tissue paper that a train passenger sees whirling in the wake of the observation car.

Life with you was lovely—and when I say lovely, I mean doves and lilies, and velvet, and that soft pink ‘v’ in the middle and the way your tongue curved up to the long, lingering ‘l.’ Our life together was alliterative, and when I think of all the little things which will die, now that we cannot share them, I feel as if we were dead too.

No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has.

do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation

Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don't stop to think, don't interrupt the scream, exhale, release life's rapture.

Was she really beautiful? Was she at least what they call attractive? She was exasperation, she was torture.

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/By the false azure in the windowpane.