Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

"Even the design and thrust of our passions is in large part written by where and when we happen to live, and mine are not yet molded so firmly that the shape of the wax can't be changed, though they are powerful enough so that the remolding will hurt."

"As a radically marginal person, you have two choices: to be intimidated by every situation, every social stratum, or to confront all of them with the same leveling vision, the same brash and stubborn spunk."

"The Bowery is where I'll end up if I don't do everything exactly right. I have to make myself a steel breastplate of achievement and good grades, so that I'll be able to get out-and get in, so that I can gain entry into the social system for where I stand, on a precarious ledge."

"...and I look for the life of music in the arcs, swerves, and tilts of its lines-the parabolas that delineate the rises and falls of our own inner life, and perhaps the drama of yearning of all organic forms."

"But what being human is really about is having fire, flair, a holy spark of inspiration. That energy...should instill not only your playing but your every gesture; it should make all your movements forceful, artful, musical."

"I know better now that emptiness is not so easy to achieve, and that assuredly it exists most purely in the soul."

"Without the color spectrum, there is no yellow or blue, and without seeing its colors, how can one be touched by the beauty of the world?"

"I come across many more gothic secrets, smoldering in the sensible interiors of these intact suburban households, and I begin to get inklings of what may ail their inhabitants, of the strangled suffering that can be bred within them. For now, I haven't yet learned how to read the surfaces either of Penny's face or of lives like hers well enough to see what's behind them, to discern the paradoxes inherent in their ve

"We like each other quite well, though I'm not sure that what is between us is 'friendship'-a word which in Polish has connotations of strong loyalty and attachment bordering on love. At first, I try to preserve the distinction scrupulously, but after a while, I give it up. 'Friend' in English is such a good-natured, easygoing sort of term..and 'acquaintance' is something an uptight, snobbish kind of person might say

"...And so I feel a kind of ferociousness about protecting it. I don't want us to turn into perpetually cheerful suburbanites, with hygienic smiles and equally hygienic feelings. I want to keep even our sadness, the great sadness from which my parents have come."