“One has to commit a painting,' said Degas,'the way one commits a crime.”

“How—I didn't know anyword for it—how "unlikely". . .How had I come to be here,like them, and overheara cry of pain that could havegot loud and worse but hadn't?”

“One has to commit a painting,' said Degas,'the way one commits a crime.”

“Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!O falling fire and piercing cryand panic, and a weak mailed fistclenched ignorant against the sky!”

“all my life i have lived and behaved very much like the sandpiper just running down the edges of different countries and continents, looking for something.”

“The armored cars of dreams, contrived to let us do so many a dangerous thing.”

“...what the Man-Moth fears most he must do..”

“Think of the long trip home. Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? Where should we be today? Is it right to be watching strangers in a play in this strangest of theatres? What childishness is it that while there's a breath of life in our bodies, we are determined to rush to see the sun the other way around? The tiniest green hummingbird in the world? To stare at some inexplicable old stonework, inexplicable and impenetrable, at any view, instantly seen and always, always delightful? Oh, must we dream our dreams and have them, too? And have we room for one more folded sunset, still quite warm?”

“I never knew him. We both knew this place, apparently, this literal small backwater, looked at it long enough to memorize it, our years apart. How strange. And it's still loved, or its memory is (it must have changed a lot). Our visions coincided--'visions' is too serious a word--our looks, two looks: art 'copying from life' and life itself, life and the memory of it so compressed they've turned into each other. Which is which? Life and the memory of it cramped, dim, on a piece of Bristol board, dim, but how live, how touching in detail --the little that we get for free, the little of our earthly trust. Not much. About the size of our abidance along with theirs: the munching cows, the iris, crisp and shivering, the water still standing from spring freshets, the yet-to-be-dismantled elms, the geese.”

“Love's the sonstood stammering elocutionwhile the poor ship in flames went down”