It is so much safer not to feel, not to let the world touch me.

I felt dumb and subdued. Every time I tried to concentrate, my mind glided off, like a skater, into a large empty space, and pirouetted there, absently.

God, if ever I have come close to wanting to commit suicide, it is now, with the groggy sleepless blood dragging through my veins, and the air thick and gray with rain ... I fell into bed again this morning, begging for sleep, withdrawing into the dark, warm, fetid escape from action, from responsibility. No good.

We know a thing by its opposite corollary; hot by having experienced cold; good by having decided what is bad; love by hate.

And what is happy? It is a going always on. There is something better to be done than I have done, and spurred by the fair delusion of progress, I will seek to progress, to whip myself on, to more and more- to learning. Always.

It is a terrible thing to be so open: it is as if my heart put on a face and walked into the world.

It was my first big chance, but here I was, sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like so much water.