As from a star I saw, coldly and soberly, the separateness of everything. I felt the wall of my skin; I am I. That stone is a stone. My beautiful fusion with the things of this world was over.

I sank back in the gray, plush seat and closed my eyes. The air of the bell jar wadded round me and I couldn't stir.

The door of the novel, like the door of the poem, also shuts. But not so fast, nor with such manic, unanswerable finality.

I had imagined a kind, ugly, intuitive man looking up and say, 'Ah!' in an encouraging way, as if he could see something I couldn't, and then I would find words to tell him how I was so scared, as if I were being stuffed farther and farther into a black, airless sack with no way out.

I tried to speak in a cool, calm way, but the zombie rose up in my throat and choked me off.

I need some older, wiser being to cry to. I talk to God, but the sky is empty, and Orion walks by and doesn't speak.

Like a cat I have nine times to die.