“Ah, those foolish days, those foolish days when we were unselfish and pure-minded; those foolish days when our simple hearts were full of truth, and faith, and reverence! Ah, those foolish days of noble longings and of noble strivings! And oh, these wise, clever days when we know that money is the only prize worth striving for, when we believe in nothing else but meanness and lies, when we care for no living creature but ourselves!”
“Slim is queer and though Nelson isn t supposed to mind that he does. He also minds that there are a couple of slick blacks making it at the party and that one little white girl with that grayish kind of sharp-chinned Polack face from the south side of Brewer took off her shirt while dancing even though she has no tits to speak of and now sits in the kitchen with still bare tits getting herself sick on Southern Comfort and Pepsi. At these parties someone is always in the bathroom being sick or giving themselves a hit or a snort and Nelson minds this too. He doesn t mind any of it very much, he s just tired of being young. There s so much wasted energy to it.”
“Chance, you ve gone past something you couldn t afford to go past; your time, your youth, you ve passed it. It s all you had and you ve had it.”
“Great beauty and youth capture our attention, excite a deep pleasure; however, why shouldn t our souls gaze at a countenance over which the years have passed? Isn t there a story there, one unknown, full of pain or beauty, which pours its reflection into the features, a story we can read with some compassion or at least get a slight hint of its meaning? The young point toward the future; the old tell of a past.”
“So often, the discarded love of youth is desperately yearned for in maturity.”
“Stoner and Masters smiled at each other, and they spoke no more of the question that evening. But for years afterward, at odd moments, Stoner remembered what Masters had said; and though it brought him no vision of the University to which he had committed himself, it did reveal to him something about his relationship to the two men, and it gave him a glimpse of the corrosive and unspoiled bitterness of youth.”
“Of course, you were crowned with laurel in the beginning, your gold hair was wreathed with laurel, but the gold is thinning and the laurel has withered. Face it – pitiful monster.”
“But flaming youth in all it s madness Keeps nothing of its heart concealed: It s loves and hates, its joys and sadness, Are babbled out and soon revealed.”
“I am life,’ the girl said. ‘What?’ he said, startled. ‘To you, I am life. What are you, thirty-eight? Forty? What have you learned? Have you done anything? Look at me, look. I’m life and when you’re done with me, some of it rubs off on you. You don’t feel so old now, do you? With me here in the squib beside you.’ Nick said, ‘I’m thirty-four and I don’t feel old. As a matter of fact, sitting here with you makes me feel older, not younger. Nothing is rubbing off.’ ‘It will,’ she said.”
“The young man pities his elders, fearing the day he, too, will join their ranks. The elderly man pities the younger generation, well-knowing the trials and tribulations that lie ahead of them.”
“جوان، اشتباه مى كند و جهان را به پيش مى راند. پير، خطا نمى كند و دنيا را به جانب توقف مى كشاند.”
“The hardest period in life is one’s twenties. It’s a shame because you’re your most gorgeous, and you’re physically in peak condition. But it’s actually when you’re most insecure and full of self-doubt. When you don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s frightening.”
“All I cared about that summer were suntans, beaches, boys and booze.”
“It is only in the peach innocence of youth that life is at its crest on top of the wheel. And there being only life, the young cling to it, they fear death... And they should! ...For they are in life.”
“To impatient youth, all things took for ever and any kind of waiting was torture. Pg. 221”
“One of the greatest challenge facing young people today, is the large scale availability of half truth’s and manipulated facts”
“I cherished her individuality, that spark of independence no child should lose to life s restrictions and parameters.”