“A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.”

“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with trave...”

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life”

“But why think about that when all the golden lands ahead of you and all kinds of unforseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?”

“I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.”

“Man, wow, there's so many things to do, so many things to write! How to even begin to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammatical fe...”

“God turns you from one feeling to another and teaches by means of opposites so that you will have two wings to fly, not one”

“But why, why, why can't people just say what they mean?”

“Don't be afraid to be confused. Try to remain permanently confused. Anything is possible. Stay open, forever, so open it hurts, and then open up some more, until the day you die, world without end,...”