Let me go to hell, that's all I ask, and go on cursing them there, and them look down and hear me, that might take some of the shine off their bliss.

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.

Words and images run riot in my head, pursuing, flying, clashing, merging, endlessly. But beyond this tumult there is a great calm, and a great indifference, never really to be troubled by anything again.

I had little talent for happiness.

I write about myself with the same pencil and in the same exercise book as about him. It is no longer I, but another whose life is just beginning.

I knew it would soon be the end, so I played the part, you know, the part of — how shall I say, I don’t know.

I shall state silences more competently than ever a better man spangled the butterflies of vertigo.