Because I've always felt a wonder at old photographs not easy to explain. Maybe I don't need to explain; maybe you'll recognise what I mean

i'm not going to say everything there is to say about Kate and me. I've read such accounts, completely explicit and details, nothing omitted; and when they've been good I've liked them. Sometimes I've even learned something about people from them, almost like an actual experience, and that's very good indeed. But my nature is different, that's all. I don't like to and I could not reveal everything about myself. I like to read them, but I wouldn't like to write one. I'm not holding back anything all that unique, in any case. So if now and then you think you can read between the lines, you may be right; or may not.

It may be that the strongest instinct of the human race, stronger even than sex or hunger, is curiosity: the absolute nee to know. It can and often does motivate a lifetime, it kills more than cats, and the prospect of satisfying it can be the most exciting of emotions.

I like women, I never run them down as somehow inferior to men, and I have contempt for men who do. And I think, for one thing, that women are just as principled as men-but they sure as hell aren't the same kind of principles. ... With no trouble at all Kate saw through the transparency to the truth-the feminine truth-underneath the serious pretense. She knew this was really a great, big expensive fascinating toy; we were all of us playing with it, and like a determined tomboy on a playground shouldering her way into a circle of boys, she was damn well going to play, too.

"I just don't think anyone has the godlike wisdom to actually rearrange the present by altering the part. ... "I don't know! Who does know? I think the most enormous kinds of decisions are being made by people who don't know either. Only in their own opinion do they know."

"But now -all right, Rube; there's no answer to what you say. If this is going to be done no matter what I think, feel, or do, then I want to be in on it."