“The Friend of Your Youth is the only friend you will ever have, for he does not really see you. He sees in his mind a face which does not exist anymore, speaks a name…which belongs to that non-existent face but which by some inane and doddering confusion of the universe is for the moment attached to a not too happily met and boring stranger.”

“a friend of your youth is the only friend you ever have..”

“(There is always another country and always another place.There is always another name and another face.And the name and the face are you, and youThe name and the face, and the stream you gaze intoWill show the adoring face, show the lips that lift to youAs you lean with the implacable thirst of self,As you lean to the image which is yourself,To set the lip to lip, fix eye on bulging eye,To drink not of the stream but of your deep identity,But water is water and it flows,Under the image on the water the water coils and goesAnd its own beginning and its end only the water knows.There are many countries and the rivers in them-Cumberland, Tennessee, Ohio, Colorado, Pecos, Little Big Horn,And Roll, Missouri, roll.But there is only water in them.And in the new country and in the new, placeThe eyes of the new friend will reflect the new faceAnd his mouth will speak to frameThe syllables of the new nameAnd the name is you and is the agitation of the airAnd is the wind and the wind runs and the wind is everywhere.The name and the face are you.And they are you.Are new.For they have been dipped in the healing flood.For they have been dipped in the redeeming blood.For they have been dipped in TimeAnd Time is only beginningsTime is only and always beginningsAnd is the redemption of our crimeAnd is our Saviour's priceless blood.For Time is always the new place,And no-place.For Time is always the new name and the new face,And no-name and no-face.For Time is motionFor Time is innocenceFor Time is West.)”

“There was the bulge and the glitter, and there was the cold grip way down in the stomach as though somebody had laid hold of something in there, in the dark which is you, with a cold hand in a cold rubber glove. It was like the second when you come home late at night and see the yellow envelope of the telegram sticking out from under your door and you lean and pick it up, but don't open it yet, not for a second. While you stand there in the hall, with the envelope in your hand, you feel there's an eye on you, a great big eye looking straight at you from miles and dark and through walls and houses and through your coat and vest and hide and sees you huddled up way inside, in the dark which is you, inside yourself, like a clammy, sad little fetus you carry around inside yourself. The eye knows what's in the envelope, and it is watching you to see you when you open it and know, too. But the clammy, sad little fetus which is you way down in the dark which is you too lifts up its sad little face and its eyes are blind, and it shivers cold inside you for it doesn't want to know what is in that envelope. It wants to lie in the dark and not know, and be warm in its not-knowing.”

“At first it was, as I have said, rather bracing and tonic. For after the dream there is not reason why you should not go back and face the fact which you have fled from (even if the fact seems to be that you have, by digging up the truth about the past, handed over Anne Stanton to Willie Stark), for any place to which you may flee will not be like the place from which you have fled, and you might as well go back, after all, to the place where you belong, for nothing was your fault or anybody's fault, for things are always as they are. And you can go back in good spirits, for you will have learned two very great truths. First, that you cannot lose what you have never had. Second, that you are never guilty of a crime which you did not commit. So there is innocence and a new start in the West after all.If you believe that dream you dream when you go there.”

“I turned around to face the reality, which was not something caught in the ice of the mind but was something now flushed, feline, lethal, and electric... ”

“There was only the sound of the July-flies, which seems to be inside your head like it is the grind and whirr of the springs and cogs which are you and which will not stop no matter what you say until they are good and ready.”