It's easier to die than to move ... at least for the Other Side you don't need trunks.

There it was, there it is, the place where during the best time of our lives friendship had its home and happiness its headquarters.

Grub Street turns out good things almost as often as Parnassus. For if a writer is hard up enough, if he’s far down enough (down where I have been and am rising from, I am really saying), he can’t afford self-doubt and he can’t let other people’s opinions, even a father’s, keep him from writing.

Human lives seldom conform to the conventions of fiction. Chekhov says that it is in the beginnings and endings of stories that we are most tempted to lie. I know what he means, and I agree.

Youth hasn't got anything to do with chronological age. It's times of hope and happiness.

I am terribly glad to be alive; and when I have wit enough to think about it, terribly proud to be a man and an American, with all the rights and privileges that those words connote; and most of all I am humble before the responsibilities that are also mine. For no right comes without a responsibility, and being born luckier than most of the world's millions, I am also born more obligated.

I am impressed by how much of my grandparent's life depended on continuities, contacts, connections, friendships, and blood relationships.