the best contacts are when one knows the obstacles and still wants to preserve a relation. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

"I see you're looking at my cuff buttons."
I hadn't been looking at them, but I did now.

Once upon a time all the men of mind and genius in the world became of one belief—that is to say, of no belief. But it wearied them to think that within a few years after their death many cults and systems and prognostications would be ascribed to them which they had never meditated nor intended. So they said to one another:

Exploration was for those with a measure of peasant blood, those with big thighs and thick ankles who could take punishment as they took bread and salt, on every inch of flesh and spirit.