“Self-satisfaction with the inability to remain conscious when faced with printed matter seems misplaced.”

“I stood a little self-consciously. I was of an age when I was still unsure of myself in such formal matters as greetings and partings.”

“In our time, the curse is monetary illiteracy, just as inability to read plain print was the curse of earlier centuries.”

“Each was anxious to play the part fate had allotted to him, and each was dimly conscious of an inability to remain confined in it, and painfully aware that their secret problems would have been unintelligible to most men of their own class and kind.”

“No aacomplishments are important than self realization of self satisfaction.”

“It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.”