If I didn’t think, I’d be much happier.

I feel terribly vulnerable and 'not-myself' when I'm not writing.

I have taken a pill to kill The thin Papery feeling.

England offers new comforts. I could write a novel there.

I thought it sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent. Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn't groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby, because the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor or pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again.

That afternoon my mother had brought me the roses. "Save them for my funeral," I'd said.

It is best to meet in a cul-de-sac, A palace of velvet With windows of mirrors. There one is safe, There are no family photographs, No rings through the nose, no cries.