When I left Merle was wearing a bungalow apron and rolling pie crust. She came to the door wiping her hands on the apron and kissed me on the mouth and began to cry and ran back into the house, leaving the doorway empty [...] I had a funny feeling as I saw the house disappear, as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again. (p. 262)
Interpretation
The quote reflects on memories and the bittersweet feeling of loss.
In this quote, the narrator describes a poignant moment filled with nostalgia as they part from someone significant. The imagery of the beloved in an apron highlights the warmth of domestic life, while the loss feels akin to losing a cherished creation, emphasizing the fragility of moments that can never be recaptured.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of cherishing moments with loved ones.
Undoubtedly the stories about them [hard-boiled detectives] had a fantastic element. Such things happened, but not so rapidly, nor to so close-knit a group of people, nor within so narrow a frame of logic. This was inevitable because the demand was for constant action; if you stopped to think you were lost. When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
Organized crime is the dirty side of the sharp dollar.
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring.
If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.
Leave greatness to others. Become so small that no one can see you. This conviction results from growing devotion to the supreme reality.
Why do we not care to acknowledge them? The cattle, the body count. We still don't like to admit the war was even partly our fault because so many of our people died. A photograph on every mantlepiece. And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It's not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember. Because you should realise the Cenotaph and the Last Post and all that stuff is concerned, there's no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.
It's very hard to live with yourself if you don't stick with your moral code.
Paradox: how do we know what we have failed to see because we have no language to express it, thus we cannot know that we have failed to see it.
Are we the only members of the Galaxy that can actually understand what a galaxy is? Could Homo sapiens really be the pinnacle of Creation - the cleverest critters in the cosmos? If we learn the answer is 'no,' that would affect our philosophies forever.
Like a blazing comet, I've traversed infinite nights, interstellar spaces of the imagination, voluptuousness and fear. I've been a man, a woman, an old person, a little girl, I've been the crowds on the grand boulevards of the capital cities of the West, I've been the serene Buddha of the East, whose calm and wisdom we envy. I've known honor and dishonor, enthusiasm and exhaustion. ...I've been the sun and the moon, and everything because life is not enough.
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