I suppose if I gave myself the chance I could be an alcoholic.

I knew chemistry would be worse, because I'd seen a big card of the ninety-odd elements hung up in the chemistry lab, and all the perfectly good words like gold and silver and cobalt and aluminum were shortened to ugly abbreviations with different decimal numbers after them.

The trouble about jumping was that if you didn't pick the right number of stories, you might still be alive when you hit bottom.

It won't happen yet, Ellen mused, mashing cooked carrots for Jill's lunch. Breakups seldom do. It will unfold slowly, one little tell-tale symptom after another like some awful, hellish flower.

I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

I have been holding a dialogue with myself and girding myself to stand fast without running.

A dispassionate white sun shone at the summit of the sky. I wanted to hone myself on it till I grew saintly and thin and essential as the blade of a knife.