Your room is not your prison. You are.

I think that as far as language goes I'm an American, I'm afraid, my accent is American, my way of talk is an American way of talk, I'm an old-fashioned American. That's probably one of the reasons why I'm in England now and why I'll always stay in England.

One night she hid the pink cotton scarf from her raincoat in the pillowcase when the nurse came around to lock up her drawers and closets for the night. In the dark she had made a loop and tried to pull it tight around her throat. But always just as the air stopped coming and she felt the rushing grow louder in her ears, her hands would slacken and let go, and she would lie there panting for breath, cursing the dumb instinct in her body that fought to go on living

Over coffee and orange juice the embryonic suicide brightens visibly.

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

I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root: It is what you fear. I do not fear it: I have been there.

I have stitched life into me like a rare organ