Robert Penn Warren

The person that loves you has picked you out of the great mass of uncreated clay which is humanity to make something out of, and the poor lumpish clay which is you wants to find out what it has been made into. But at the same time, you, in the act of loving somebody, become real, cease to be a part of the continuum of the uncreated clay and get the breath of life in you and rise up. So you create yourself by creating another person, who, however, has also created you, picked up the you-chunk of clay out of the mass. So there are two you's, the one you yourself create by loving and the one the beloved creates by loving you. The farther those two you's are apart the more the world grinds and grudges on its axis. But if you loved and were loved perfectly then there wouldn't be any difference between the two you's or any distance between them. They would coincide perfectly, there would be a perfect focus, as when a stereoscope gets the twin images on the card into perfect alignment.

Nothing fazed him, not insult or anger or violence or getting his face beat into a hamburger. He was a true businessman. He knew the value of everything.

The subject of my future, as a matter of fact, was one on which I had never cared to dwell. I simply didn't care. I would think that I'd get a job, any kind of job, and do it and collect my pay and spend the pay and go back to the job on Monday morning, and that would be all. I had no ambitions.

You live with words a long time. Then all at once you are old, and there are the things and the words don't matter

[A]ll life is but the dark heave of blood and the twitch of the nerve.

But if anything is for certain it is that no story is ever over, for the story which we think is over is only a chapter in a story which will not be over[.]

[F]or when you get in love you are made all over again.

A time comes when you think you cannot bear another thing, but it happens to you, and you can bear it.

[T]he human being is a very complicated contraption and […] they are not good or bad but are good and bad and the good comes out of bad and the bad out of good[.]

The truth shall make you free.

[Y]ou have to make the good out of the bad because that is all you have to make it out of.

The end of man is knowledge but there's one thing he can't know. He can't know whether knowledge will save him or kill him. He will be killed, all right, but he can't know whether he is killed because of the knowledge which he has got or because of the knowledge which he hasn't got and which if he had it would save him.