Even the one moment that you thought was your eternity fades out and is forgotten and dies.

Yes, I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness, sad as an eagle without wings, sad as a violin with only one string and that one broken, sad as a woman who is growing old. Sad, sad, sad.

The musty smell, the bugs, the lonliness, this room, which is part of the street outside-this is all I want from life.

A room is, after all, a place where you hide from the wolves. That's all any room is.

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.

They say when trouble comes close ranks, and so the white people did.

As it was in the beginning, ... is now, and ever shall be, world without end.