Wednesday

I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.
--Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

I didn't mean I'd seen everything, John Grady said.
I know you didn't.
I just meant I'd seen some things I'd as soon not of.
I know it. There's hard lessons in this world. 
What's the hardest? 
I dont know. Maybe it's just that when things are gone they're gone. They aint comin back. 
Yessir.
--Cormac McCarthy, Cities Of The Plain

Please, God, send me something to adore.
--Michael Cunningham, By Nightfall