Literature Love

All right. Have it your own way. Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault.

He had become reconciled to all this, yet all the same from time to time the terrible thought of the straight road would overcome him - a road along which he was being pursued, where he was visible to everyone, and from which he could not turn aside.

It was my dream that screwed up, the stupid hearthside idea that it would be wonderful to follow one great red line across America instead of trying various roads and routes.

It is the people who remember, but when the people are gone we won’t have anyone to remember. People go to a lot of trouble to make things memorable. I would like to make things enjoyable by watching everyone, and wondering what is going on. Today I am as full of this day as the air in this apartment is full of particulate matter that sparkles off the highway. A sliver of the moon is still visible at midday. Reading the news is unbearable, but necessary. All exits are final and all that.

We cannot get rid of mankind’s fleetingly wicked wishes. We can get rid of the machines that make them come true.

They talked of harvests moving north. It was warm and soft. I wanted to go and get Rita again and tell her a lot more things, and really make love to her this time, and calm her fears about men. Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk - real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.

Prejudice, a dirty word, and faith, a clean one, have something in common: they both begin where reason ends.

'It's not what enters men's mouths that's evil,' said the alchemist. 'It's what comes out of their mouths that is.'

That’s all that life has to give in the way of perfection….the warm and complete understanding of two, or three, in a close-walled room with the windows blind to the world.

If you are not admired, no one will take the trouble to disapprove.

Seems like the only kind of job an American can get these days is committing suicide in some way.

Kumiko and I felt something for each other from the beginning. It was not one of those strong, impulsive feelings that can hit two people like an electric shock when they first meet, but something quieter and gentler, like two tiny lights traveling in tandem through a vast darkness and drawing imperceptibly closer to each other as they go. As our meetings grew more frequent, I felt not so much that I had met someone new as that I had chanced upon a dear old friend.