“We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial—I believe we are lost.”

“Like lost children we live our unfinished adventures.”

“Men like us believe we are gods...”

“People like you and me never grow old. We never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.”

“We want a sense that an important character, like a narrator, is reliable. We want to believe that a character is not playing ages or being coy or being manipulative, but is telling the truth to the best of his or her ability...We do not wish to be crudely manipulated...We want to be massaged by a masseur, not whapped by a carpet beater.”

“Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted or enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles.”