It's just that it's hard to believe in greatness... - James Salter

You're so American. You believe everything is possible, everything will come. I know differently.

You think when you have love that love is easy to find, that everyone has it. It's not true. It's very hard to find.

...alone in this city, alone on this sea. The days were strewn about him, he was a drunkard of days. He had achieved nothing. He had his life — it was not worth much — not like a life that, though ended, had truly been something. If I had had courage,he thought, if I had had faith. We preserve ourselves as if that were important, and always at the expense of others. We hoard ourselves. We succeed if they fail, we are wise if they are foolish, and we go onward, clutching, until there is no one — we are left with no companion save God. In whom we do not believe. Who we know does not exist.