NERD in all caps

One of the things that will be a common thread for my blog is references to literature. I will, after all, be spending 18 hours a week in literature and writing classes while spending untold other hours doing the reading and paper writing. My hope is to share some of my little literary gems along the way. So here is my first:

"Then she whispered huskily, faintly: "We must try to love one another."

The terrible and the beautiful sentence, the last, the final wisdom that the earth can give, is remembered at the end, is spoken too late, wearily. It stands there, awful and untraduced above the dusty racket of our lives. No forgetting, no forgiving, no denying, no expaining, no hating. O mortal and perishing love, born with this flesh and dying with this brain, your memory will haunt the earth forever."
—Thomas Wolfe
Look Homeward Angel

As I was reading the final pages of the novel on the flight home from Omaha the other day, this page and particular passage struck me with its eloquent and far-reaching importance of love in its most basic form. We must try to love one another. If we can do that, perhaps we have found the magic elixir of life. And there is no way I could have said it in the way that he did.