“The avalanche was down, the hillside swept bare behind it; the last echoes died on the white slopes; the new mount glittered and lay still in the silent valley.”

“These memories are the memorials and pledges of the vital hours of a lifetime. These hours of afflatus in the human spirit, the springs of art, are, in their mystery, akin to the epochs of history, when a race which for centuries has lived content, unknown, behind its own frontiers, digging, eating, sleeping, begetting, doing what was requisite for survival and nothing else, will, for a generation or two, stupefy the world; commit all manner of crimes, perhaps; follow the wildest chimeras, go down in the end in agony, but leave behind a record of new heights scaled and new rewards won for all mankind; the vision fades, the soul sickens, and the routine of survival starts again.”

“I can't bare you when you're not amusing.”

“Conversation should be like juggling; up go the balls and plates, up and over, in and out, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them.”

“... a necklace of pearls on a white neck.We had lost the sense of discovery which had infused the anarchy of our first year. I began to settle down.... the old house in the foreground, the rest of the world abandoned and forgotten; a world of its own of peace and love and beauty...”

“The cream and hot butter mingled and overflowed separating each glucose bead of caviar from its fellows, capping it in white and gold.”

“...for in that city [New York] there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.”