Reading. Reading was the stable backdrop against which my life was played.

My head aches, my eyes burn, my arms and legs have given up, and my face in the mirror has a grayish cast. The bed, across the room, calls in its unmistakable lover's croon, Come to me, come, only I can make you truly happy, oh, how happy I'll make you, don't resist, remember how you moan with pleasure the instant we touch..... Laura Acosta

Getting away from being 'a good girl' is important because it's impossible to be a 'good girl' and a writer at the same time.

In books I found explicitly, flamboyantly, everything censored in life.

Head held high and lips parted, she breathed in the music, sending it through her torso and arms and legs the way the Tai Chi teacher told us to breath the air, transforming it into energy, motion. Dancing is the body's song, and Bess sang.

Nothing is as horrendous as imagining the times of happiness from an environment which is that of hell.

Leave the dishes unwashed and the demands on your time unanswered. Be ruthless and refuse to do what people ask of you.