I must get my soul back from you; I am killing my flesh without it.

Doreen had intuition. Everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones.

I may never be happy, but tonight I am content. At times like this I'd call myself a fool to ask for more.

The sun gives you ulcers, the wind gives you T.B. Once you were beautiful.

I felt very low. I had been unmasked only that morning by Jay Cee herself, and I felt now that all the uncomfortable suspicions I had about myself were coming true. After nineteen years of running after good marks and prizes and grants of one sort and another, I was letting up, slowing down, dropping clean out of race.

I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I should any more. This made me sad and tired. Then I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I shouldn't, the way Doreen did, and this made me even sadder and more tired.

Is to throw together events from my own life, fictionalizing to add color—it’s a pot boiler really, but I think it will show how isolated a person feels when he is suffering a breakdown . . . I’ve tried to picture my world and the people in it as seen through the distorting lens of a bell jar.