"I think we look for the differences in people because it makes us less lonely."

"If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are gone, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing."

"The people dreamed and fought and slept as much as ever. And by habit they shortened their thoughts so that they would not wander out into the darkness beyond tomorrow."

"I do not have any home. So why should I be homesick?"

"We wander, question. But the answer waits in each separate heart - the answer of our own identity and the way by which we can master loneliness and feel that at last we belong."

"There is no stillness like the quiet of the first cold nights in the fall."

"I am not meant to be alone and without you who understands."

"They are the we of me."

"It was like she was cheated. Only nobody had cheated her. So there was nobody to take it out on. However, just the same she had that feeling. Cheated."

"Love is a joint experience between two persons -- but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved."

"Once you have lived with another, it is a great torture to have to live alone."

"A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lillies of the swamp."

"The thinking mind is best controlled by the imagination."

"She stood in front of the mirror a long time, and finally decided she either looked like a sap or else she looked very beautiful. One or the other."

"The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen."

"My advice to you is this. Do not attempt to stand alone. ...The most fatal thing a man can do is try to stand alone."

"But all the time-no matter what she was doing-there was music."

"There was hope in him, and soon perhaps the outline of his journey would take form."

"The mind is like a richly woven tapestry in which the colors are distilled from the experiences of the senses, and the design drawn from the convolutions of the intellect."

"It was better to be in a jail where you could bang the walls than in a jail you could not see."

"It is music that causes the heart to broaden and the listener to grow cold with ecstasy and fright."

"There's nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book."

"Sometimes this fellow's music was like little colored pieces of crystal candy, and other times it was the softest, saddest thing she had ever imagined about."

"The value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself."

"Owing to the fact he was a mute they were able to give him all the qualities they wanted him to have."

"While time, the endless idiot, runs screaming around the world"

"Because in some men it is in them to give up everything personal at some time, before it ferments and poisons--throw it to some human being or some human idea. They have to."

"The human heart is a lonely hunter-but the search for us southerners is more anguished....."

"There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries."

"It was like she was so empty there wasn't even a feeling or thought in her."

"And why did everyone persist in thinking the mute was exactly as they wanted him to be--when most likely it was all a very queer mistake?... In the battling tumult of voices he alone was silent."

"Resentment is the most precious flower of poverty."

"The emotion is Janus-faced: we are torn between a nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known."

"His own life seemed so solitary, a fragile column supporting nothing amidst the wreckage of the years."

"In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together."

"I must go home periodically to renew my sense of horror."

"I got to wear blinders all the time so I won't think sideways or in the past."

"And by habit they shortened their thoughts so that they would not wander out into the darkness beyond tomorrow."

"But no value has been put on human life; it is given to us free and taken without being paid for. What is it worth? If you look around, at times the value may seem to be little or nothing at all."

"Us going to have a cup of coffee. Then maybe it all won't seem so bad."

"Jake had begun to carry chalk in his pockets, also. He wrote brief sentences. He tried to word them so that a man would think."

"To the lost, transfixed among the self-inflicted ruins, All that is non-air (if this indeed is not deception) Is agony immobilized. While Time, The endless idiot, runs screaming round the world."

"Wonderful music like this was the worst hurt there could be. The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen."

"I wish I was somebody else except me."

"That was the best of all. To speak the truth and be attended."

"Why did he go onward? Why did he not rest here upon the bottom of utmost humiliation and for a while take his content? But he went onward."

"That was all he wanted for himself – to give to her. Biff's mouth hardened. He had done nothing wrong but in him he felt a strange guilt. Why? The dark guilt in all men, unreckoned and without a name."

"You don't know what it is to store up a lot of details and then come upon something real."

"He nearly always put his hand on his friend's arm and looked for a second into his face before leaving him."

"Coming down was the hardest part of any climbing."