I think if I had done anything else I would like to have been a doctor. This is the sort of polar opposition to being a writer, I suppose.

The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end.

The reason I haven't been writing in this book for so long is partly that I haven't had one decent coherent thought to put down.

But I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure at all. How did I know that someday―at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere―the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?

I wanted to do everything once and for all and be through with it.

If you expect nothing from anybody, you’re never disappointed.

I feel terribly vulnerable and 'not-myself' when I'm not writing.