In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels.

In the fall the war was always there but we did not go to it any more.

“Oh, Jake,” Brett said, “we could have had such a damned good time together.” . . .

It makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch. . . . It’s sort of what we have instead of God.

I did not care what it [the world] was all about.

It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.

Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.

You and me, we’ve made a separate peace.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer’s loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing.

Nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing. Not even in the newspapers.