I am flushed and warm. I think I may be enormous, I am so stupidly happy, My wellingtons Squelching and squelching through the beautiful red.

I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I'd never seen before in my life.

Is to throw together events from my own life, fictionalizing to add color—it’s a pot boiler really, but I think it will show how isolated a person feels when he is suffering a breakdown . . . I’ve tried to picture my world and the people in it as seen through the distorting lens of a bell jar.

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.

We stayed at home to write, to consolidate our outstretched selves.

The truth comes to me. The truth loves me.

I decided I would put off the novel until I had gone to Europe and had a lover, and that I would never learn a word of shorthand. If I never learned shorthand I would never have to use it.