“I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?”

“There was a way in which my grandmother's true self was not these guests' business; no one's true self was the business of more than a very small number of family members or close friends.”

“Accordingly, the one respect in which I depart from my younger self is that I now regard those people who have little or no story to tell themselves as terribly fortunate.”

“You must be life for me to the very end," so he writes. "That is the only way in which to sustain my idea of you. Because you have gotten, as you see, tied up with something so vital to me, I do not think I shall ever shake you off. Nor do I wish to. I want you to live more vitally every day, as I am dead. That is why, when I speak of you to others, I am just a bit ashamed. It's hard to talk of one's self so intimately”

“A true friend honors and encourages our best self, and they will work at aaving us from self destruction, even if that means being difficult.”

“My worthless self lives on at the bottom of every expression, like an indissoluble residue at the bottom of a glass from which only water was drunk.”