I sank back in the gray, plush seat and closed my eyes. The air of the bell jar wadded round me and I couldn't stir.

Jealousy can open the blood, it can make black roses.

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

Doing all the little tricky things it takes to grow up, step by step, into an anxious and unsettling world.

Once one has seen God, what is the remedy?

I wonder about all the roads not taken and am moved to quote Frost...but won't. It is sad to be able only to mouth other poets. I want someone to mouth me.

At this rate, I'd be lucky if I wrote a page a day. Then I knew what the problem was. I needed experience. How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or even seen anybody die? A girl I knew had just won a prize for a short story about her adventures among the pygmies in Africa. How could I compete with that sort of thing?