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Sometimes it was hell to conceal her impatience over the male of the species’ general ineptness, and Lane’s in particular.
Lane was speaking now as someone does who has been monopolizing conversation for a good quarter of an hour or so and who believes he has just hit a stride where his voice can do absolutely no wrong.
“If you’re a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you’re supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything.
I’m sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect.…
Everything everybody does is so—I don’t know—not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and—sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way.”
I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.
Act, Zachary Martin Glass, when and where you want to, since you feel you must, but do it with all your might.
He thinks anything peculiar or unpleasant will just go away if he turns on the radio and
some little schnook starts singing.”
“Phooey, I say, on all white-shoe college boys who edit their campus literary magazines. Give me an honest con man any day.”
“I wish you’d learn to leave the goddam party when it’s over,”
“I don’t know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn’t make you happy.”
mean treasure is treasure, for heaven’s sake. What’s the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge?
knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn’t, it’s just a disgusting waste of time!
there’s no difference at all, that I can see, between the man who’s greedy for material treasure—or even intellectual treasure—and the man who’s greedy for spiritual treasure. As you say, treasure’s treasure, God damn it,
Just because I’m choosy about what I want—in this case, enlightenment, or peace, instead of money or prestige or fame or any of those things—doesn’t mean I’m not as egotistical and self-seeking as everybody else.
The rest, with very little exaggeration, was books. Meant-to-be-picked-up books. Permanently-left-behind books. Uncertain-what-to-do-with books. But books, books.
The goddam sands run out on you every time you turn around. I know what I’m talking about. You’re lucky if you get time to sneeze in this goddam phenomenal world.”
An artist’s only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else’s.
