I felt very low. I had been unmasked only that morning by Jay Cee herself, and I felt now that all the uncomfortable suspicions I had about myself were coming true. After nineteen years of running after good marks and prizes and grants of one sort and another, I was letting up, slowing down, dropping clean out of race.

That is salvation. To give of love inside. To keep love of life, no matter what, and give to others. Generously.

I drink sherry and wine by myself because I like it and I get the sensuous feeling of indulgence...luxury, bliss, erotic-tinged.

Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline. You've got to go so far, so fast, in such a small space, that you've got to burn away all the peripherals.

The sickness rolled through me in great waves. After each wave it would fade away and leave me limp as a wet leaf and shivering all over and then I would feel it rising up in me again, and the glittering white torture chamber tiles under my feet and over my head and all four sides closed in and squeezed me to pieces.

The claw of the magnolia, drunk on its own scents, asks nothing of life.

I liked looking on at other people in crucial situations. If there was a road accident or a street fight or a baby pickled in a laboratory jar for me to look at, I'd stop and look so hard I never forgot it.