“And he told stories about the stars above, about the earth below. He told them to make the night pass, and also because his heart was all reflections in which the soul of the world moved.”
“In the night, I hear 'em talk. Coldest story ever told. Somewhere far along this road he lost his soul.”
“One day he said, "I'll tell this townHow it feels to be an unfunny clown."And he told them all why he looked so sad,And he told them all why he felt so bad.He told of Pain and Rain and Cold,He told of Darkness in his soul,And after he finished his tale of woe,Did everyone cry? Oh no, no, no,They laughed until they shook the trees...And while the world laughed outside.Cloony the Clown sat down and cried.”
“He spoke of his campaigns in the deserts of Mexico and he told them of horses killed under him and he said that the souls of horses mirror the souls of men more closely than men suppose and that horses also love war. Men say they only learn this but he said that no creature can learn that which his heart has no shape to holo”
“After a heavy snowfall one night in early December the snow formed a thick quilt from which the old man's face emerged like a sleeping child's above an eiderdown. Jim told himself that he never moved because he was warm under the snow.”
“He was there alone with himself, collected, tranquil, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart with the serenity of the skies, moved in the darkness by the visible splendors of the constellations, and the invisible splendor of God, opening his soul to the thoughts which fall from the Unknown. In such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when the flowers of night inhale their perfume, lighted like a lamp in the center of the starry night, expanding his soul in ecstasy in the midst of the universal radiance of creation, he could not himself perhaps have told what was passing in his own mind; he felt something depart from him, and something descend upon him, mysterious interchanges of the depths of the soul with the depths of the universe.”