I could have waited years, now that I knew the end of the story. I was cold and wet and very happy. I could even look with charity towards the altar and the figure dangling there. She loves us both, I thought, but if there is to be a conflict between an image and a man, I know who will win. I could put my hand on her thigh or my mouth on her breast; he was imprisoned behind the altar and couldn't move to plead his cause.

Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought.

They haven't left us much to believe, have they? — even disbelief. I can't believe in anything bigger than a home, or anything vaguer than a human being.

Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel; sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust.

So much in writing depends on the superficiality of one's days. One may be preoccupied with shopping and income tax returns and chance conversations, but the stream of the unconscious continues to flow undisturbed, solving problems, planning ahead: one sits down sterile and dispirited at the desk, and suddenly the words come as though from the air: the situations that seemed blocked in a hopeless impasse move forward: the work has been done while one slept or shopped or talked with friends.

Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too.

If I had to choose between life in the Soviet Union and life in the U. S. A. , I would certainly choose the Soviet Union.