“My life has begun to acquire again the remote and lonely quality it had when I was wandering about before—I seem to be the phantom in a world of people; or the only person in a world of phantoms—it’s all the same. I love you, my dear: your letters give me life. I can not yet swallow in my gorge the thought of night adventure. My life has withdrawn on a most high hill, within a wall. I no longer get depressed, as I did once, at being alone. I’m used to it now—there’s a strange aerial coldness about it. Once, I loathed myself at heart, because I felt I was a spineless sensualist: I saw myself, a worn out whore master at 30, a battered rake at 40, with small red gummy eyes. But I believe now I may become some frosty hermit: with thirsty cheeks and eyes. I weave dreams no more about affairs with living flesh; but very often now I have thought of the antique figures—not coldly, but with passionate warmth—Not as symbols, but as great actualities.  I want eternal life, eternal renewal, eternal love […] I want life to ebb and flow in me in a mighty rhythm of oblivion and ecstasy.” -Thomas Wolfe, in a letter to Aline Bernstein, from My Other Loneliness: Letters of Thomas Wolfe and Aline Bernstein ed. Suzanne Stutman