“I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, and yet I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.”

“I wished there was some kind of switch on my brain. That I could turn it off in the same way that I could turn off the television. Just click it off and immediately empty my mind of all these images and worrying thoughts. And simply leave a blank screen. Or if I could just remove my head and put it on the bedside table and forget about it until morning. And then attach it again when I needed it.”

“I wished sometimes to shake off all thought and feeling, but I learned that there was but one means to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death - a state which I feared yet did not understand.”

“So we waited. I felt useless. I felt like I was in the way. I wished I had some nervous habits so I could indulge in them.”

“I tasted in his arms unspeakable pleasures. Deadened by pleasure, then revived by an even more delirious pleasure, I made the object of happiness almost as happy as I was myself; and yet, true to my system, I made sure that he did not harvest the rose.”

“I wish I could close my eyes and beblown into dust and nothingness, feel all my thoughts disperse like dandelion fluff drifting off on the wind.”