"Goodbye, my dear Valentine. I am afraid you won't like this letter. We will never understand one another, my friend" ("A Letter," pg. 50.)

"Don't bother me with your grown-up opinions! "("My Goddaughter," pg. 27.)

"We scurry along, pressed for time, talkative, screeching like chickens, hurrying toward the illusion of living at high speed, of keeping warm, working hard, shunning thought, and refusing to be burdened with regrets, remorse, or memories" ("The Halt," pg. 107.)

"One sex practically eclipsed the other, dominating it, not only by numbers, but by its own particular smell and magnetic atmosphere" ("Gribiche," pg. 208.)

"To my cost, I have proved from long experience that the past is a far more violent temptation to me than the craving to know the future" ("The Riny Moon," pg. 351.)

Whenever I think of her, I always see her shored up by those scruples she modestly called fidgets and sustained by the...