Hermann Hesse’s Beneath the Wheel

no truth can cure the sadness we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness, can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see that sadness through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sadness that comes to us without warning.

Brahms’ Fourth Symphony.

John Updike’s The Centaur,

“A gentleman is someone who does not what he wants to do but what he should do.”

That’s what distinguishes us from the outside world: most people go about their lives unconscious of their deformities, while in this little world of ours the deformities themselves are a precondition.

I realize that all I can place in the imperfect vessel of writing are imperfect memories and imperfect thoughts.

Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt. Life is like that.

What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?