If I have a dry spell ... I wait and live harder, eyes, ears, and heart open, and when the productive time comes, it is that much richer.

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

I want to be important. By being different. And these girls are all the same.

Now I know what loneliness is, I think. Momentary loneliness, anyway. It comes from a vague core of the self - - like a disease of the blood, dispersed throughout the body so that one cannot locate the matrix, the spot of contagion.

If I was going to fall, I would hang on to my small comforts, at least, for as long as I possibly could.

I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.

I felt like a racehorse in a world without racetracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone.