I felt wise and cynical as all hell.

Everything people did seemed so silly, because they only died in the end.

I had always imagined myself hitching up on to my elbows on the delivery table after it was all over - dead white, of course, with no makeup and from the awful ordeal, but smiling and radiant, with my hair down to my waist, and reaching out for my first little squirmy child and saying its name, whatever it was.

England offers new comforts. I could write a novel there.

Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel. That would fix a lot of people.

…beating time along the edge of thought.

It's a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It's much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.