"When Boone was asked if he had got lost in that forest, he said: I can't say as ever I was lost, but I was bewildered once for three days."
Letter from Kentucky, J. D. Daniels, Paris Review 203
I think America is at the crossroads where it will have to choose between its greatness and its decadence.
Alistair Cooke
When Adam delved, and Eve span, Who was then a Gentleman?
John Balle
Blindness cuts people off from things, but deafness, cuts them off from people.
Helen Keller via this obituary of Robert Panara
Ned Rorem on youth: "We admire them for their beauty and they want us to admire them for their minds, the little shits."
Via Charles Baxter in Best American Essays 2013