I can't deceive myself out of the bare stark realization that no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how sure that character is fate, nothing is real, past or future, when you are alone in your room with the clock ticking loudly into the false cheerful brilliance of the electric light. And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide.

I need not to be more with others, but to be more & more deeply, richly alone. Recreating worlds.

There ought, I thought, to be a ritual for being born twice - patched, retreaded and approved for the road.

The sky leans on me, me, the one upright among all horizontals.

I tried to speak in a cool, calm way, but the zombie rose up in my throat and choked me off.

I think I made you up inside my head.

Some pale, hueless flicker of sensitivity is in me. God, must I lose it in cooking scrambled eggs for a man.