Life is a Story

Just now it came to me what you don't understand. You know about the ugliness of a man. You use all the sad weak parts of a man, and God knows he has them. But you don't know about the rest.

I'm looking forward to the bad smell of ugly books, and the sweet smell of good thinking.

There's more beauty in the truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.

He used hard sharp words, almost as though he wanted to cut himself with them.

Aaron was content to be part of his world, but Cal must change it.

My wish isn't as strong as it once was. I'm afraid I could be talked out of it, or what would be worse, I could be held back just by being needed. Please try not to need me. That's the worse bait of all.

She tried to force her will on him, and she saw that he was detached and free.

The warmth melted through into the cold concealed box where he stored forbidden thoughts. And the thoughts came timidly up to the surface like children who don't know whether they will be received.

Thou mayest. That gives a choice. It may be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if 'thou mayest' it is also true that 'thou mayest not.'

Thank you for wanting to honor me with the truth. It's not clever but it's more permanent.

Sometimes a man wants to be stupid, if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.

He told me how a man, a real man, has no right to let sorrow destroy him. He told me again and again how I must believe that time would take care it. He said it so often that I knew that he was losing.

He got into a book, crawled and grovelled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts and came up with the book all over his face and hands.

He rode lightly on top of a book, and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe.

There was a fine steel wire of truthfulness in him that cut off the heads of fast traveling lies.

Tom was arguing with greatness, and the father watched his son and could feel the drive and the fear, the advance and retreat because he could feel it in himself.

It isn't simple at all, it's desperately complicated. But at the end there's light.