“On the day the world is blown up, the playwright whose show opened the night before will be leafing past the news section of the Times to find his review--as he ascends through the stratosphere, oblivious.”

“There is a time in the life of every boy when he for the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line into manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning the limitations of life. From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun.”

“She refers to her past as the time before she was "blown away.”

“Each leaf that brushed his face deepened his sadness and dread. Each leaf he passed he'd never pass again. They rode over his face like veils, already some yellow, their veins like slender bones where the sun shone through them. He had resolved himself to ride on for he could not turn back and the world that day was as lovely as any day that ever was and he was riding to his death.”

“He just wanted to get through his uninteresting day, so he could cross over into the night, and find his way to the red headed light that brightened the black sky.”

“In the rational light of day, he could tell himself that it was better this way, for both of them. The past was the past, nothing but memories buried, and the pain of losing something precious was but brief. Most of the time he could make himself believe it, but sometimes in the night, with no company but his own echoing thoughts, the past would sneak up on him.”