While I am watching the birds I believe I am comparatively immune from the assaults of life. The very indifference to humanity of these wild creatures affords me a certain safeguard. Where all else is dangerous, hostile and liable to inflict pain, they alone can do me no injury because, probably, they are not even aware of my existence. The birds are at once my refuge and my relaxation.

To wait - only to wait - without even the final merciful deprivation of hope.Sometimes I think that some secret court must have tried and condemned me, unheard, to this heavy sentence.

You mustn't be so afraid of life - it's all we've got. Don't let it hurt you so much.

Sometimes a savage beauty lured me into the sun and I would start to love the danger a little. On these occasions I felt the reluctant love drained painfully from me as blood drains from a deep wound. The tigers lapped my love's blood and remained enemies. The inhabitants of the day laughed at the gift I wanted to bring them, and I shut myself in my inner room to escape the betrayal of their arrogant mouths.

I had never before met anyone who owned a telephone and believed in dragons.

At last I feel identified with the mountains, clean, cold, hard, detached.

Because of my fear that the daytime world would become real, I had to establish reality in another place.