It's so easy to wish for death when nothing's wrong with you! It's so easy to fall in love with death, and I've been all my life, and seen it's most faithful worshippers crumble in the end, screaming just to live, as if all the dark veils and the lillies and the smell of candles, and grandiose promises of the grave meant nothing. I knew that. But I always wished I was dead. It was a way to go on living

Don't you see? I'm not the spirit of any age. I'm at odds with everything and always have been! I have never belonged anywhere with anyone at any time!

Paris was a universe whole and entire unto herself, hollowed and fashioned by history; so she seemed in this age of Napoleon III with her towering buildings, her massive cathedrals, her grand boulevards and ancient winding medieval streets - as vast and indestructible as nature itself.

I can’t help being a gorgeous fiend. It’s just the card I drew.

It was over now, and the meaningless world was tolerable and need not be explained. And never would it be, and how foolish I had ever been to think so.

Protect your voice and your vision. If going on the Internet and reading Internet reviews is bad for you, don’t do it. … Do what gets you to write and not what blocks you. … Don’t take any guff off anybody.

Words. Borne on the ever swelling current of hatred, like flowers opening in the current, petals peeling back, then falling apart.