I don't know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting

I don't know if I should care for a man who made life easy; I should want someone who made it interesting.

...but these backwaters of existence sometimes breed, in their sluggish depths, strange acuities of emotion... ("Afterward")

There are moments when a man's imagination, so easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily level and surveys the long windings of destiny.

To be able to look life in the face: that's worth living in a garret for, isn't it?

Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope.