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.

This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A's, but I knew that's what marriage was like, because cook and clean and wash was just what Buddy Willard's mother did from morning till night, and she was the wife of a university professor and had been a private school teacher herself.

Nothing is real except the present, and already, I feel the weight of centuries smothering me. Some girl a hundred years ago once lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass. The high moment, the burning flash, come and are gone, continuous quicksand. And I don’t want to die.

I’ll never speak to God again.

At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.

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

I never feel so much myself as when I'm in a hot bath.