Steps

Lovers are not snails; they don't have to protrude from their shells and meet each other halfway. Meet me within your own self.

Had it been possible for me to fix the plane permanently in the sky, to defy the winds and clouds and all the forces pushing it upward and pulling it earthward, I would have willingly done so. I would have stayed in my seat with my eyes closed, all strength and passion gone, my mind as quiescent as a coat rack under a forgotten hat, and I would have remained there, timeless, unmeasured, unjudged, bothering no one, suspended forever between my past and my future.

We did our best to understand the murder: the murderer was a part of our lives; not so the victim.

Aware of its value as a restorative, I stole only black caviar.

he had always located the essential truth of his life in his wants and compulsions.

Mr. Kosinski won the National Book Award for Steps,

For the uncontrolled there is no wisdom, nor for the uncontrolled is there the power of concentration; and for him without concentration there is no peace. And for the unpeaceful, how can there be happiness?

As a vagrant, I was everybody’s victim.

The defendant's behavior prejudiced the jury. He never admitted or even seemed to realize that what he had done was a brutal crime; he never argued that he had lost control or had not known what he was doing or that he would never do anything like it again. He just described his encounter with the victim without exaggeration, and in the most ordinary of terms. Almost all of us on the jury were able to discuss and imagine how he had committed the crime and what had impelled him to do it. To clarify certain aspects of his case, some of the jurors acted out the role of the accused in an attempt to make the rest of us understand his motives. After the trial, however, I realized that there was very little speculation in the jury room about the victim of the murder. Many of us could easily visualize ourselves in the act of killing, but few of us could project ourselves into the act of being killed in any manner. We did our best to understand the murder: the murderer was a part of our lives; not so the victim.