“Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.”

“After a while you'll think no thought the others do not think. You'll know no word the others can't say. And you'll do things because the others do them. You'll feel the danger in any difference whatever-a danger to the crowd of like-thinking, like-acting men...Once in a while there is a man who won't do what is demanded of him, and do you know what happens? The whole machine devotes itself coldly to the destruction of his difference. They'll beat your spirit and your nerves, your body and your mind, with iron rods until the dangerous difference goes out of you. And if you can't finally give in, they'll vomit you up and leave you stinking outside--neither part of themselves, nor yet free...They only do it to protect themselves. A thing so triumphantly illogical, so beautifully senseless as an army can't allow a question to weaken it.”

“You stay out here a little while, an' if you smell any roses, you come let me smell, too.”

“I should have known […] I am the rain. […] I am the land […] and I am the rain. The grass will grow out of me in a little while.”

“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.”

“The clouds appeared and went away, and in a while they did not try anymore.”

“Critics are the eunuchs of literature. They stand by in envious awe while the whole man and his partner demonstrate the art of living.”