It is not restful, it is not possible to talk wholeheartedly to more than one person at a time. You can't really talk with a person unless you surrender to them, for the moment (all other talk is futile). You can't surrender to more than one person a moment.

Fame is a kind of death because it arrests life around the person in the public eye. If one is recognized everywhere, one begins to feel like Medusa. People stop their normal life and actions and freeze into staring manikins. "We can never catch people or life unawares," as I wrote to my mother, in an outburst of frustration. "It is always looking at us."

Splutter, splutter. Yes - we're off - we're rising. But why start off with an engine like that? But it smooths out now, like a long sigh, like a person breathing easily, freely. Like someone singing ecstatically, climbing, soaring - sustained note of power and joy. We turn from the lights of the city; we pivot on a dark wing; we roar over the earth. The plane seems exultant now, even arrogant. We did it, we did it!

Go for a short walk in a soft rain - lovely - so many wild flowers startling me through the woods and a lawn sprinkled with dandelions, like a night with stars. And through it all the sound of soft rain like the sound of innumerable earthworms stirring in the ground.

Too many people, too many demands, too much to do; competent, busy, hurrying people - It just isn't living at all.

What release to write so that one forgets oneself, forgets one's companion, forgets where one is or what one is going to do next to be drenched in sleep or in the sea. Pencils and pads and curling blue sheets alive with letters heap up on the desk.

Certain springs are tapped only when you're alone.