“I felt like telling Japhy everything I thought but I knew it didn't matter and moreover he knew it anyway and silence is the golden mountain.”

“The world ain't so bad, when you got Japhies, I thought, and felt glad. All the aching muscles and the hunger in my belly were bad enough, and the surroundant dark rocks, the fact that there is nothing to soothe you with kisses and soft words, but just to be sitting there meditating and praying for the world with another earnest young man -- 'twere good enough to have been born just to die, as we all are. Something will come of it in the Milky Ways of eternity stretching in front of all our phantom unjaundiced eyes, friends. I felt like telling Japhy everything I thought but I knew it didn't matter and moreover he knew it anyway and silence is the golden mountain.”

“But the mountains were mighty solemn, and so was Japhy, and for that matter so was I, and in fact laugher is solemn.”

“All I saw was Ben, and I knew that all he saw was me. The whole world didn't - it was there, but it didn't matter.”

“Somehow I knew that no matter what I chose to tell or to keep secret, he would understand.”

“When I first met him I didn't want to look into his eyes because I knew I would be able to tell how he thought about me and that scared me”