[This passage from Kay Boyle’s tribute appeared in the June 1930 Transition in which Crosby was remembered by friends. Boyle’s short stories appeared in the Black Sun Press, and Boyle herself stayed with the Crosbys in Paris. Crosby knew her well enough to cash in some stock dividends on his 1928 visit to New York to help Boyle pay for an abortion. On several occasions – notably in letters to his mother ion 1928 and 1929 – Crosby described her as "the best girl writer since Jane Austen."

There was no one who ever lived more consistently in the thing that was happening then. And with that courage to meet whatever he had chosen, with no consistency except the consistency of his own choice, and always the courage to match it. His heart was like an open door, so open that there was a crowd getting into it. And with his mind it was the same way. His protection was not in closing himself up when he found he was invaded, but in retreat. Retreat from knowing too much, from too many books, from too much of life. If he crossed the sea, it was never a stretch he looked upon as wide rolling water, but every drop of it stung in him because he did not know how to keep things outside himself; every rotting bit of wreck in it was heaped on his own soul, and every whale was his own sporting, spouting young adventure. If he went into retreat, into his own soul he would go, trailing this clattering, jangling universe with him, this ermine-trimmed, this moth-eaten, this wine velvet, the crown jewels on his forehead, the crown of thorns in his hand, into retreat, but never into escape. Either they would get out and leave him, the young boy making his own choice, or they would stay inside. But other than this there was no middle way.