I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.

I, to you, am lost in the gorgeous errors of flesh.

I am made, crudely, for success.

I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.

With me, the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life. And when it is gone it is dead. But you can't start over with each new second. You have to judge by what is dead. It's like quicksand... hopeless from the start.

When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tup and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank into sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies.

All I want is blackness. Blackness and silence.