Thomas Wolfe

“30 · First Party And even the very skies that framed New York, the texture of the night itself, seemed to have the architecture and the weather of the city’s special quality. It was, he saw,...”

“30 · First Party His untried youth was not able to understand, would perhaps have been unwilling to face the grim fact, that man’s conflict with the forces of reality is unceasing, that life...”

“33 · Waiting for Glory Then, you let it cook slowly—oh, very slowly, for several hours—it’s a very delicate operation—you’ve got to keep your eye on what you’re doing all the time—so few of...”

“It seemed to him that the Square, itself the accidental masonry of many years, the chance agglomeration of time and of disrupted strivings, was the center of the universe. It was for him, in...”

“The thought of these vast stacks of books would drive him mad: the more he read, the less he seemed to know — the greater the number of the books he read, the greater the immense uncountable...”

“Is this not the true romantic feeling; not to desire to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping you.”

“All things on earth point home in old October; sailors to sea, travellers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has fors...”

“If a man has talent and can't use it, he's failed. If he uses only half of it, he has partly failed. If he uses the whole of it, he has succeeded, and won a satisfaction and triumph few men...”

“Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America - that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement.”

“Not even the most powerful organs of the press, including Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times, can discover a new artist or certify his work and make it stick. They can only bring you the...”

“Publishing is a very mysterious business. It is hard to predict what kind of sale or reception a book will have, and advertising seems to do very little good.”