I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

…beating time along the edge of thought.

My wanting to write books annihilates the original root impulse that would have me bravely and blunderingly working on them.

Out of the ash I rise with my red hair and I eat men like air.

The truth comes to me. The truth loves me.

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.

I, love, I am the pure acetylene virgin attended by roses.