“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…”

“Each night I lie awake and stare up at the stars and think, what the hell happened to my ceiling.”

“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.”

“Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, "Why me?", then a voice answers "Nothing personal, your name just happened to come up.”

“Once it happened, as I lay awake at night, that I suddenly spoke in verses, in verses so beautiful and strange that I did not venture to think of writing them down, and then in the morning they vanished; and yet they lay hidden within me like the hard kernel within an old brittle husk.”

“My days and nights were one long, quiet, continuously contained dream of teror, tension, and anxiety. I wondered how long I could bear it.”