I wanted to run away from everything but I wanted to run towards something too. Don't you see, dear, how it was? - Sherwood Anderson

From being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in procession before him, the countless figures of men who before his time have come out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy.

Vatanperverlikle alakası olmayan savaşların yapılacağı, insanların Tanrı'yı unutup sadece ahlaki değerlere dikkat edeceği, iktidar isteğinin hizmet isteğinin yerine geçeceği ve insanoğlunun pervasızca servet edinme telaşının güzelliği neredeyse unutturacağı, dünya tarihindeki bu en maddiyatçı çağın başlangıcının hikâyesi Tanrı'nın kulu Jesse'yi de, tıpkı etrafındaki diğerleri gibi etkisi altına alıyordu.

He was almost a poet in his old age and his notion of what happened took a poetic turn. 'I had come to the time in my life when prayer became necessary and so I invented gods and prayed to them,' he said. 'I did not say my prayers in words nor did I kneel down but sat perfectly still in my chair. In the late afternoon when it was hot and quiet on Main Street or in the winter when the days were gloomy, the gods came into the office and I thought no one knew about them. Then I found that this woman Elizabeth knew, that she worshipped also the same gods. I have a notion that she came to the office because she thought the gods would be there but she was happy to find herself not alone just the same. It was an experience that cannot be explained, although I suppose it is always happening to men and women in all sorts of places.