... you looked around and saw everybody either married or busy and happy and thinking and being creative, and you felt scared, sick, lethargic, worst of all, not wanting to cope. You saw visions of yourself in a straightjacket, and a drain on the family, murdering your mother in actuality, killing the edifice of love and respect built up over the years in the hearts of other people.

I’ll never speak to God again.

I do not know who I am tonight.

You are a dream; I hope I never meet you.

And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.

My wanting to write books annihilates the original root impulse that would have me bravely and blunderingly working on them.

I want so obviously, so desperately to be loved, and to be capable of love.