When he talked his eyes went away from mine and then he forced himself to look straight at me and he began to explain and I knew that he felt very strange with me and that he hated me, and it was funny sitting there and talking like that, knowing he hated me.

It's so easy to make a person who hasn't got anything seem wrong.

that expression you get in your eyes when you are very tired and everything is like a dream and you are starting to know what things are like underneath what people say they are.

Age seldom arrives smoothly or quickly. It's more often a succession of jerks.

I think that the desire to be cruel and to hurt (with words because any other way might be dangerous to ourself) is part of human nature. Parties are battles (most parties), a conversation is a duel (often). Everybody's trying to hurt first, to get in the dig that will make him or her feel superior, feel triumph.

Now I no longer wish to be loved, beautiful, happy or successful. I want one thing and one thing only - to be left alone.

Of course she had some pathetic illusions about herself or she would not be able to go on living.