“I know now that the most genuine happiness is kept afloat by an underlying sorrow.”

“It took us five hours to reach Tokyo, but I was really happy. I kept talking about myself, and didn't hear anything about Nana.But now that I know you better; I know you wouldn't say anything.”

“in skies of deepening bluethe moon, heaven's queenwas now afloat”

“and I attempted, above all, to get at the truth, not the masquerade that declares itself as genuineness when, habitually, the truth is invoked, but a wholesale leveling of the artifices of personality, a selfless plunge into...into what I had thought must remain forever hidden, to the substance of what I had always kept in shadow ... to that point where self becomes sorrow ...”

“You’re insane, you know that?” he says. “It’s the only thing keeping me afloat,” I say.”

“I meet new Walt Whitmans everyday. There are a dozen of them afloat. I don't know which Walt Whitman I am.”