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

You've only got so long to live.

The future is what matters — because one never reaches it, but always stays in the present — like the White Queen who had to run like the wind to remain in the same spot.

As from a star I saw, coldly and soberly, the separateness of everything. I felt the wall of my skin; I am I. That stone is a stone. My beautiful fusion with the things of this world was over.

But writing poems and letters doesn't seem to do much good.

It was sometime in October; she had long ago lost track of all the days and it really didn’t matter because one was like another and there were no nights to separate them because she never slept any more.

Secretly, in studies and attics and schoolrooms all over America, people must be writing.