“My eyes are vague blue, like the sky, and change all the time; they are indiscriminate but fleeting, entirely specific and disloyal, so that no one trusts me. I am always looking away. Or again at something after it has given me up.”

“If I am ever to find these trees meaningfulI must have you by the hand. As it is, theystretch dusty fingers into an obscure sky,and the snow looks up like a face dirtiedwith tears. Should I cry out and see what happens?There could only be a stranger wanderingin this landscape, cold, unfortunate, himselffrozen fast in wintry eyes.”

“Now I am quietly waiting forthe catastrophe of my personalityto seem beautiful again,and interesting, and modern.The country is grey andbrown and white in trees,snows and skies of laughteralways diminishing, less funnynot just darker, not just grey.It may be the coldest day ofthe year, what does he think ofthat? I mean, what do I? And if I do,perhaps I am myself again.”

“Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous (and how the same names keep recurring on that interminable list!), but one of these days there'll be nothing left with which to venture forth.Why should I share you? Why don't you get rid of someone else for a change?”

“I take thisfor myself, and you take up the thread of my life between your teeth,tin thread and tarnished with abuse,you shall still hearas long as the beast in me maintainsits taciturn power to close my lidsin tears, and my loins move yetin the ennobling pursuit of all the worldsyou have left me alone in, and would bethe dolorous distraction from,while you summon your army of anguisheswhich is a million hooting blood vesselson the eyes and in the earsat that instant before death.”

“Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern.”

“My HeartI'm not going to cry all the timenor shall I laugh all the time,I don't prefer one "strain" to another.I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie,not just a sleeper, but also the big,overproduced first-run kind. I want to be at least as alive as the vulgar. And if some aficionado of my mess says "That's not like Frank!," all to the good! I don't wear brown and grey suits all the time, do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,often. I want my feet to be bare,I want my face to be shaven, and my heart--you can't plan on the heart, butthe better part of it, my poetry, is open.”