I love life. But it is hard and I have so much, so very much to learn.

So much working, reading, thinking, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough.

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.

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

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?

Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry Took its place among the elements.

I am accused. I dream of massacres. I am a garden of black and red agonies. I drink them, Hating myself, hating and fearing. And now the world conceives Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love.