I didn't really see why people should look at me. Plenty of people looked queerer than I did.

But everybody has exactly the same smiling frightened face, with the look that says: "I'm important. If you only get to know me, you will see how important I am. Look into my eyes. Kiss me, and you will see how important I am.

Why can’t I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which fits best and is more becoming?

I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years old.

The one man in the room who was as big as his poems, huge, with hulk and dynamic chunks of words.

I hadn't, at the last moment, felt like washing off the two diagonal lines of dried blood that marked my cheeks. They seemed touching, and rather spectacular, and I thought I would carry them around with me, like the relic of a dead lover, till they wore off of their own accord.

I am afraid of getting older … I am afraid of getting married. Spare me from cooking three meals a day—spare me from the relentless cage of routine and rote. I want to be free…. I want, I want to think, to be omniscient…. I think I would like to call myself ‘The girl who wanted to be God.