When I lost you, it was as if all the solid ground went from under my feet. Look at me now — I am a shipwrecked man clinging to a bit of wreckage. - Henrik Ibsen

I have skulked up there and wasted eight precious years of my life! The very day I was set free, I should have gone forth into the world — out into the steel-hard, dreamless world of reality! I should have begun at the bottom and swung myself up to the heights anew — higher than ever before — in spite of all that lay between.

"Don't use that exotic word "ideals". We have a good enough native word: "lies"."

Always do that, wild ducks do. They shoot to the bottom as deep as they can get, sir — and bite themselves fast in the tangle and seaweed — and all the devil's own mess that grows down there. And they never come up again.