“And what of the dead? They lie without shoesin the stone boats. They are more like stonethan the sea would be if it stopped. They refuseto be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone. ”

“The future is a fog that is still hanging out over the sea, a boat that floats home or does not.”

“God went out of me as if the sea dried up like sandpaper, as if the sun became a latrine. God went out of my fingers. They became stone. My body became a side of mutton and despair roamed the slaughterhouse.”

“She suffers according to the digitsof my hate. I hear the filamentsof alabaster. I would lie downwith them and lift my madnessoff like a wig. I would lieoutside in a room of wooland let the snow cover me.Paris white or flake whiteor argentine, all in the washbasinof my mouth, calling “Oh.”I am empty. I am witless.Death is here. There is noother settlement.”

“Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone.”

“It was as if a morning-glory had bloomed in her throat, and all that blue and small pollen ate into my heart, violent and religious”

“I like you; your eyes are full of language."[Letter to Anne Clarke, July 3, 1964.]”