The silence drew off, baring the pebbles and shells and all the tatty wreckage of my life.

If only a group of people were more important to me than the idea of a Novel, I might begin a novel.

I'm happier writing about doctors than I would have been being one.

Very depressed today. Unable to write a thing. Menacing gods. I feel outcast on a cold star, unable to feel anything but an awful helpless numbness.

Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them. But they were a part of me. They were my landscape.

There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them.

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.