“Most nights I lay on my futon I was sick with anxiety, and felt a pit inside myself as big and empty as if the world were nothing more than giant hall empty of people.”

“It was one of those rare nights when I was kept awake not by my nightmares and anxieties but by something exciting and exhilarating. Most nights I lay awake waiting for some unexpected disaster…I think I somehow felt that as long as I was conscious, nothing bad could happen…”

“By my existence I am nothing more than an empty place, an outline,that is reserved within being in general. Given with it, though, is the duty to fill in this empty place. That is my life.”

“I am quite empty of feeling. I don't care the slightest bit in the world for anybody or anything except myself. But I do care for myself, and I'm going to survive in spite of them all, and I'm going to have my own success without caring the least in the world how I get it. Because I'm cleverer than they are, I'm cunninger than they are, even if I'm weak. I must build myself up proper protections, and entrench myself, and then I'm safe. I can sit inside my glass tower and feel nothing and be touched by nothing, and yet exert my power, my will, through the glass walls of my ego.”

“All my life, I've been trying to fill an emptiness inside. But that emptiness...I've built myself around it. Filling it in would be like filling in the empty space within a cathedral.”

“Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all others were making ships.”