“We were talking about The Bell Jar, because we were sixteen, and we wanted to be depressed in New York.”

“We were talking about my dad, remembering him as vividly as possible as possible because we knew we weren’t going to get any knew memories. We were holding on to the old ones as tightly as we could.”

“When daybreak came we were zooming through New Jersey with the great cloud of Metropolitan New York rising before us in the snowy distance. Dean had a sweater wrapped around his ears to keep warm. He said we were a band of Arabs coming in to blow up New York.”

“It's the whole country that makes or breaks a thing like this. New York has very little to do with it. Now if it were a play, it would be different. New York does make or break a play; but it doesn't make or break a book; it doesn't make or break a magazine. The great mass of the readers are outside of New York and the rural districts are what we have got to go for. They don't read much in New York; they write and talk about what they've written. Don't you worry.”

“We talked about nothing in particular, but it felt like we were talking about the most important things...”

“If we were never depressed we should not be alive; it is the nature of a crystal never to be depressed.”