America... It is a fabulous country, the only fabulous country; it is the only place where miracles not only happen, but where they happen all the ti… - Thomas Wolfe

He who lets himself be whored by fashion will be whored by time.

So, then, to every man his chance—to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining, golden opportunity—to every man the right to live, to work, to be himself, and to become whatever thing his manhood and his vision can combine to make him — this, seeker, is the promise of America.

And it was this that awed him — the weird combination of fixity and change, the terrible moment of immobility stamped with eternity in which, passing life at great speed, both the observer and the observed seem frozen in time.