I want it to smell of magnolias instead
of peanuts and I want my shoes to crunch on the same gravel that Lee's
boots crunched on. There's no beauty without poignancy and there's no
poignancy without the feeling that it's going, men, names, books,
houses — bound for dust — mortal —

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

The fruit of youth or of the grape, the transitory magic of the brief passage from darkness to darkness - the old illusion that truth and beauty were in some way entwined.