I didn’t want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I’d cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.

Piece by piece, I fed my wardrobe to the night wind, and flutteringly, like a loved one’s ashes, the gray scraps were ferried off, to settle here, there, exactly where I would never know, in the dark heart of New York.

My mother said the cure for thinking too much about yourself was helping somebody who was worse off than you.

Sometimes I feel so stupid and dull and uncreative that I am amazed when people tell me differently.

I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me.

Why am I obsessed with the idea I can justify myself by getting manuscripts published? Is it an escape-an excuse for any social failure-so I can say "No, I don't go out for many extracurricular activities, but I spend a lot of time writing."

Let me not be weak and tell others how bleeding I am internally; how day by day it drips, and gathers, and congeals.