“No man is happy who does not know his own mind.”

“Memory comes in to fill the spaces of whatever isn’t there. … Memory has a way of growing things, of improving them. The hardships get harder, the good times get better, and the whole damn arc of a life takes on a mystic glow that only memory can give it.”

“It also had goddamn kind of beauty, in the same way anything is beautiful when it is beyond all scope of sheer tremendousness.”