Now I know what loneliness is, I think. Momentary loneliness, anyway. It comes from a vague core of the self - - like a disease of the blood, dispersed throughout the body so that one cannot locate the matrix, the spot of contagion.

Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well.

So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state.

I feel occasionally my skull will crack, fatigue is continuous - I only go from less exhausted to more exhausted & back again.

The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end.

Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.

I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.