“The stairs ended. I wished I knew the jackass who’d made the staircase so short. I’d throw him down the damn steps so he could count them with his head.”

Source: Acheron

An incident which he often narrated which profoundly affected him, page=4
Baba Amte: A Vision of New India

When We Were Very Young (1924)

Source: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), p. 100.
Context: Since I was about ten years younger than this crew of alcoholics, I just listened and filled their cups with cheap wine. After they’d had enough, I’d tell them of my escapades in Riverbank and in Panama where I’d worked with the Southern Baptist Convention and Jesus Christ to save the black souls of niggers, spics and Indians. I used to keep my eye on Harris when I told my stories. He had this nasty habit of pulling out a little notebook in the middle of a conversation and jotting down, as he said, “story ideas.” Later on, after I’d transferred to S. F. State and taken his writing course, he asked me if I wanted to read his first draft of Wake Up, Stupid! I kept it for a week and returned it to him at the next short story seminar. I only read the first paragraph. After that, I was no longer afraid of the intellectuals. I knew I could tell a better story.

Elizabeth Proctor
The Crucible (1953)

As quoted in obituaries (7 September 1962)
Variant: God made the world round so we would never be able to see too far down the road.
Source: Out of Africa

Source: The World of Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: City of Ashes

"The Larger College".
In Classic Shades, and Other Poems (1890)