“Yesterday I did not want to be borrowed but this is the typewriter that sits before me and love is where yesterday is at.”

“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.”

“All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children. [...] I was trying my damnedest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can't build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out.”

“WordsBe careful of words,even the miraculous ones.For the miraculous we do our best,sometimes they swarm like insectsand leave not a sting but a kiss.They can be as good as fingers.They can be as trusty as the rockyou stick your bottom on.But they can be both daisies and bruises.Yet I am in love with words.They are doves falling out of the ceiling.They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.They are the trees, the legs of summer,and the sun, its passionate face.Yet often they fail me.I have so much I want to say,so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.But the words aren't good enough,the wrong ones kiss me.Sometimes I fly like an eaglebut with the wings of a wren.But I try to take careand be gentle to them.Words and eggs must be handled with care.Once broken they are impossiblethings to repair.”

“Do you like me?”No answer.Silence bounced, fell off his tongueand sat between usand clogged my throat.It slaughtered my trust.It tore cigarettes out of my mouth.We exchanged blind words,and I did not cry,I did not beg,but blackness filled my ears,blackness lunged in my heart,and something that had been good,a sort of kindly oxygen,turned into a gas oven.”

“I lay there silently,hoarding my small dignity.I did not ask about the gate or the closet.I did not question the bedtime ritualwhere, on the cold bathroom tiles,I was spread out dailyand examined for flaws.I did not knowthat my bones,those solids, those pieces of sculpturewould not splinter.”

“I must always forget how one word is able to pick out another, to manner another, until I have got something I might have said... but did not.”