“Now I am just an elderly lady who is full of spleen, who humps around greater Boston in a God-awful hat, who never lived and yet outlived her time, hating men and dogs and Democrats.”

“Anne, I don't want to live. . . . Now listen, life is lovely, but I Can't Live It. I can't even explain. I know how silly it sounds . . . but if you knew how it Felt. To be alive, yes, alive, but not be able to live it. Ay that's the rub. I am like a stone that lives . . . locked outside of all that's real. . . . Anne, do you know of such things, can you hear???? I wish, or think I wish, that I were dying of something for then I could be brave, but to be not dying, and yet . . . and yet to [be] behind a wall, watching everyone fit in where I can't, to talk behind a gray foggy wall, to live but to not reach or to reach wrong . . . to do it all wrong . . . believe me, (can you?) . . . what's wrong. I want to belong. I'm like a jew who ends up in the wrong country. I'm not a part. I'm not a member. I'm frozen.”

“The children are all crying in their pensand the surf carries their cries away.They are old men who have seen too much,their mouths are full of dirty clothes,the tongues poverty, tears like puss.The surf pushes their cries back.Listen.”

“It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.”

“I am God, la de dah.”

“God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.”

“And we are magic talking to itself, noisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins forgotten. Am I still lost? Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself”