"But nowhere, either in my brother's work or my own, is there a single line drawn in obedience to an idea, however crude, or beauty. There is action, comedy, invention; but there is not even the germ of a feeling for design.... This absence of beauty, now that I come to think of it, is characteristic of our childhood." The First Years, page 4

"Nothing was forbidden me. In the seemingly endless rainy afternoons I took volume after volume from the shelves. I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has of finding a new blade of grass." The First Years, page 8

"I knew nothing about Balder; but instantly I was uplifted into huge regions of northern sky, I desired with almost sickening intensity something never to be described (except that it is cold...