She now knew that the death she feared might not be a physical one, that it could be death of the will, the soul, the mind, the laws, and thus not death, but a perpetual dying.

The rose-garden world of perfection is a lie and a bore too!

all children blackmail their parents with their innocence.

suicide is the ultimate 'one-up,' as it were, the accusation that brooks no defense, the argument won at last.

Measure the hate you feel now, and the shame. That quantity is your capacity also to love and to feel joy and to have compassion.

What cook can match herself against hunger and memory?

...to experience the reality was to suffer a boredom as endless as the illness itself...the boredom of insanity was a great desert, so great that anyone's violence or agony seemed an oasis, and the brief companionship seemed like a rain in the desert that was numbered and counted and remembered long after it was gone.