“In truth we were quickly reaching--had likely enough already reached--the age where it no longer made sense to talk about "promise." It was around this time that I remarked to Max that no matter what we now achieved no one would say, "He's so young." Precocity had passed us by."After twenty-eight," I sad sadly, "you're judged on your merits.""Unless one of us dies," Max corrected me. "Then they'll all say, 'He was so young.”

“There was something beautiful and timeless to her about a hardback without its jacket, a book that could be known in no way except by reading it.”

“People ask why my brother killed himself. "Why would such a gifted journalist, whose works have won all the prizes in the world, do such a thing?" "He had so many friends, why would he want to leave them?" "But what about all he had to live for?" In a short space of time, I had a drawerful of articles wirtten by reporters pondering the death of one who, like them, made a living out of trying to sort out the truth, separating fact from conjecture. They were hell-bent on making sense out of this event.When they phoned, I told them they were going to fail. I told them that the problem with suicide is that it is a senseless event. There is no why.But of course that's wrong. There are numerous whys, though it's almost impossible, or unlikely that any single one of them is "the answer" that people want to hear.”

“What I am saying,' [Hiram Bell] said, 'is that we once had much, and we made what we could of it, but now it is passed. Do you mourn the passing of civilization? I do not. We do not live for civilization. We live to build our souls up to be good enough for God. More beer?”

“Staring and staring into the mirror, it sees many faces within its face - the face of the child, the boy, the young man, the not-so-young man - all present still, preserved like fossils on superimposed layers, and, like fossils, dead. Their message to this live dying creature is: Look at us - we have died - what is there to be afraid of?It answers them: But that happened so gradually, so easily. I'm afraid of being rushed.”

“What is wrong with you ” he whispered “that you care so much about me ” Blay’s sad smile added about a million years to his age lining his face with the kind of knowledge that came only after life kicked you in the nuts a number of times. “What is wrong with you that you can’t see why I would”

“..none of this surprised me; it was as if this meeting between us was foreordained by a force greater than either of us. I know I had the events wheeling swiftly over a well-traveled course to a destination long ago established. I felt as if I was merely saying the words I had been destined to say. If there was no surprise, neither was there fear or alarm. The circumstance seemed both right and natural--as if we had talked this way a thousand times, and knew well what the other would say... This is the only truth we can know in life. Nothing else in the world is certain--only this: that a man and woman should come together in love.”