Would you like a whiskey?' I say. 'I've got some.' (That's original. I bet nobody's ever thought of that way of bridging the gap before.)

...morbidly, attracted him to strangeness, to recklessnesss, even unhappiness.

I'm no use to anybody,' I say. 'I'm a cérébrale, can't you see that?' Thinking how funny a book would be, called 'Just a Cérébrale or You Can't Stop Me From Dreaming'. Only, of course, to be accepted as authentic, to carry any conviction, it would have to be written by a man. What a pity, what a pity!

I must write. If I stop writing my life will have been an abject failure. It is that already to other people. But it could be an abject failure to myself. I will not have earned death.

You imagine the carefully pruned, shaped thing that is presented to you is truth. That is just what it isn't. The truth is improbable, the truth is fantastic; it's in what you think is a distorting mirror that you see the truth.

before I could read, almost a baby, I imagined that God, this strange thing or person I heard about, was a book.

She had left me thirsty and all my life would be thirst and longing for what I had lost before I found it.