I want very much to be back in the caul, on my back in the dark forever.

I speak for an art ... weary of its puny exploits, weary of pretending to be able, of being able, of doing a little better the same old thing, of going a little further along a dreary road.

I love order. It's my dream. A world where all would be silent and still, and each thing in its last place, under the last dust.

I hope I am not too old to take it up seriously, nor too stupid about machines to qualify as a commercial pilot. I do not feel like spending the rest of my life writing books that no one will read. It is not as though I wanted to write them.

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

Reality, whether approached imaginatively or empirically, remains a surface, hermetic.

The memory came faint and cold of the story I might have told, a story in the likeness of my life, I mean without the courage to end or the strength to go on.