Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.

I could feel the winter shaking my bones and banging my teeth together.

One thing, I try to be honest. And what is revealed is often rather hideously unflattering.

It was sometime in October; she had long ago lost track of all the days and it really didn’t matter because one was like another and there were no nights to separate them because she never slept any more.

So much working, reading, thinking, living to do. A lifetime is not long enough. Nor youth to old age long enough. Immortality and permanence be damned. Sure I want them, but they are nonexistent, and won't matter when I rot underground. All I want to say is: I made the best of a mediocre job. It was a good fight while it lasted. And so life goes.

A psychiatrist is the god of our age. But they cost money.

I had decided I would put off the novel until I had gone to Europe and had a lover.