And so I rehabilitate myself - staying up late this Friday night in spite of vowing to go to bed early, because it is more important to capture moments like this, keen shifts in mood, sudden veering of direction - than to lose it in slumber.

I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.) The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. (I think I made you up inside my head.)

My life is a discipline, a prison: I live for my own work, without which I am nothing.

I hate handing over money to people for doing what I could just as easily do myself, it makes me nervous.

At this rate, I'd be lucky if I wrote a page a day. Then I knew what the problem was. I needed experience. How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or even seen anybody die? A girl I knew had just won a prize for a short story about her adventures among the pygmies in Africa. How could I compete with that sort of thing?

Read widely of others' experiences, even if it'd be more comfortable to snuggle back in the comforting cotton-wool of blissful ignorance.