I felt overstuffed and dull and disappointed, the way I always do the day after Christmas.

I wanted to crawl in between those black lines of print, the way you crawl through a fence, and go to sleep under that beautiful big green fig-tree.

I opened the door and blinked out into the bright hall. I had the impression it wasn't night and it wasn't day, but some lurid third interval that had suddenly slipped between them and would never end.

Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.

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

The door of the novel, like the door of the poem, also shuts. But not so fast, nor with such manic, unanswerable finality.

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.