I may be inordinately fond of my earliest impressions, but then I have reason to be grateful for them. They led the way to a veritable Eden of visual and tactile sensations. (Chapter 1)

The follow of such thematic designs through one’s life should be, I think, the true purpose of autobiography. (Chapter 1)

Music, I regret to say, affects me merely as an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds. (Chapter 2)

To love with all one’s soul and leave the rest to fate, was the simple rule she heeded. (Chapter 2)

She cherished her own past with the same retrospective fervor that I now do her image and my past. (Chapter 3)

It is certainly not then—not in dreams—but when one is wide awake, at moments of robust joy and achievement, on the highest terrace of consciousness, that mortality has a chance to peer beyond its own limits, from the mast, from the... (Chapter 2)