You're looking, sir, at a very dull survivor of a very gaudy life. Crippled, paralyzed in both legs. Very little I can eat, and my sleep is so near waking that it's hardly worth the name. I seem to exist largely on heat, like a newborn spider.

I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.

Only the peak feels so sound and stable that the beginning of the falling is hidden for a little while.

Surely heaven must have something of the color and shape of whatever village or hill or cottage of which the believer says, This is my own.

Maybe the only thing worse than having to give gratitude constantlyall the time, is having to accept it.

Read, read read. Read everything.

any live man is better than any dead man but no live or dead man is very much better than any other live or dead man