Source: East of Eden
“Everybody has a secret world inside of them.”
The Sandman
Context: Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe.
Source: And the Mountains Echoed
The Callahan Chronicals <!-- [Sic] -->(1996) [originally published as Callahan and Company (1988)] "Backword", p. xii
Context: In a culture where pessimism has metastasized like slow carcinoma, that crazy Irishman was backward enough to try to raise hopes, like hothouse flowers. In an era during which even judicious use of alcohol has been increasingly bad-rapped, the man who came to be known as The Mick of Time was backward enough to think that the world can look just that essential tad better when seen through a flask, brightly. (As long as you let someone else drive you home afterward.) Above all, he — and his goofball customers — believed that shared pain is lessened, and shared Joy increased.
Now he is gone. Gone back whence he came, and we are all the poorer for it. But I refuse to say that we will not see his like again. Or his love again.
“There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.”
Crofts, Act III
Variant: There are no secrets except the secrets that keep themselves.
Source: 1890s, Mrs. Warren's Profession (1893)
As quoted by Melinda Blau, "Conquering Pain: New Treatments, New Hope," New York Magazine (Mar 22, 1982)
“Everybody in boxing probably makes out well except for the fighter.”
As quoted in Boxing Monthly http://www.boxing-monthly.co.uk/content/0008/three.htm.
On boxing
Message at Pickfair, Beverly Hills, California (1 June 1932), as quoted in Life Is A Jest (1974) edited by A. K. Hajra <!-- or 6 January? 1932 Me p100-101 -->
General sources
Context: Life becomes meaningful and all activities are purposeful only on the basis of faith in the enduring reality. … The greatest romance possible in life is to discover this Eternal Reality in the midst of infinite change. Once, one has experienced this, one sees oneself in everything that lives, one recognises all of life as his life, everybody's interests as his own. One is no longer bound by habits of the past, no longer swayed by the hopes of the future — One lives in and enjoys each present moment to the full. There is no greater romance in life than this adventure in realization.
“In my little box
At the top of the stair
With my Indian rug
And a pipe to share.”
Pocahontas
Song lyrics, Rust Never Sleeps (1978)
