“I felt inquisitive, keyed up with interest and excitement that foreign surroundings always induced in me, and in a sense I felt at home, too, for there is something familiar about a port to any seasoned traveller - the sights, smells, activities even the sprawl of streets and wharves that surround and owe their existence and livelihoods to it.”

“The place smelled like Sam -- or, I guess, he smelled like the store. Like ink and old building and something more leafy than coffee but less interesting than weed. It was all very ... erudite. I felt surrounded by conversations I had no interest in participating in.”

“I felt on the verge of something, a mystery that surrounded me like gauze, something I was beginning to unwind.”

“Even when the east excited me most, even when I was keenly aware of its superiority to the broad, sprawling, swollen towns beyond the Ohio, with their interminable inquisitions which only spared children and the very old-even then it had always for me a quality of distortion. ”

“And when her eyes met mine, I felt something click, like a key turning in a lock. Believe me, I'm no romantic, and while I've heard about love at first sight, I've never believed in it, and I still don't. But even so, there was something there, something recognizably real, and I couldn't look away.”

“Where I went in my travels, it's impossible for me to recall. I remember the sights and sounds and smells clearly enough, but the names of the towns are gone, as well as any sense of the order in which I traveled from place to place.”