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

... you looked around and saw everybody either married or busy and happy and thinking and being creative, and you felt scared, sick, lethargic, worst of all, not wanting to cope. You saw visions of yourself in a straightjacket, and a drain on the family, murdering your mother in actuality, killing the edifice of love and respect built up over the years in the hearts of other people.

I like people, but to learn about one individual always appeals to me more than anything.

I am what I feel and think and do.

I woke to the sound of rain.

The frost makes a flower, the dew makes a star.

To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.