I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart? I am incapable of more knowledge. What is this, this face So murderous in its strangle of branches? - Its snaky acids kiss. It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults That kill, that kill, that kill.

I started adding up all the things I couldn't do.

It's a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It's much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.

And what is happy? It is a going always on. There is something better to be done than I have done, and spurred by the fair delusion of progress, I will seek to progress, to whip myself on, to more and more- to learning. Always.

The tulips are too red...they hurt me.

To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.

Can a selfish egocentric jealous and unimaginative female write a damn thing worthwhile?