What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.

But when I took up my pen, my hand made big, jerky letters like those of a child, and the lines sloped down the page from left to right horizontally, as if they were loops of string lying on the paper, and someone had come along and blown them askew.

The reason I haven't been writing in this book for so long is partly that I haven't had one decent coherent thought to put down.

Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them. But they were a part of me. They were my landscape.

I had been alone more than I could have been had I gone by myself.

And there's the fallacy of existence: the idea that one could be happy forever and age with a given situation or series of accomplishments.

If I didn't think, I'd be much happier; if I didn't have any sex organs, I wouldn't waver on the brink of nervous emotion and tears all the time.