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.

I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life.

I wanted to tell her that if only something were wrong with my body it would be fine, I would rather have anything wrong with my body than something wrong with my head, but the idea seemed so involved and wearisome that I didn’t say anything. I only burrowed down further in the bed.

Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little?

because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression Of something beautiful, but annihilating.

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.