“Behold the onset of my flinty tone. Along with so much else, a soft-tissue sarcoma can apparently drain the exultation from one's prose.”

“Behold yon rough and flinty roadWhere youth, now youth no more,Gropes whining, seeking crumbs of loavesHe cast away of yore.”

“From apparently the basest metals we have the finest toned bells.”

“All I wanted was what I'd already had. That exultation, that love. It was my one real home; I was a visitor everywhere else.”

“From a distance a metronome is ticking through the fog, and I mechanically chew to the familiar caress of its music, counting, along with everyone else, up to fifty: fifty statutory chews for each mouthful. And, still mechanically beating out the time, I go downstairs, and, like everyone else, check off my name in the book as one leaving the premises. But I sense that I'm living separately from everyone else, alone, surrounded by a soft, soundproof wall, and that my world is on my side of this wall.”

“Writers are a superior breed. No one else can face so much rejection and still thrive.”