“Why did I walk so purposefully in a straight line? Where would it take me? He went round and round and we got there all the same.”

“I walk the line that continually threatens to lose its tautness under me, dropping me into the dark pit where there is no meaning.”

“I live in the space between chaos and shape. I walk the line that continually threatens to lose its tautness under me, dropping me into the dark pit where there is no meaning. At other times the line is so wired that it lights up the soles of my feet, gradually my whole body, until I am my own beacon, and I see then the beauty of newly created worlds, a form that is not random. A new beginning.”

“I don't know why it is that one kind of dark can be so different from another. Real dark is thicker and quieter, it fills up the space between your jacket and your heart. It gets in your eyes. When I have to be out late at night, it's not knives and kicks I'm afraid of, though there are plenty of those behind walls and hedges. I'm afraid of the Dark. You, who walk so cheerfully, whistling your way, stand still for five minutes. Stand still in the Dark in a field or down a track. It's then you know you're there on sufferance. The Dark only lets you take one step at a time. Step and the Dark closes round your back. In front, there is no space for you until you take it. Darkness is absolute. Walking in the Dark is like swimming underwater except you can't come up for air.”

“When my husband had an affair with someone else I watched his eyes glaze over when we ate dinner together and I heard him singing to himself without me, and when he tended the garden it was not for me.He was courteous and polite; he enjoyed being at home, but in the fantasy of his home I was not the one who sat opposite him and laughed at his jokes. He didn't want to change anything; he liked his life. The only thing he wanted to change was me.It would have been better if he had hated me, or if he had abused me, or if he had packed his new suitcases and left.As it was he continued to put his arm round me and talk about being a new wall to replace the rotten fence that divided our garden from his vegetable patch. I knew he would never leave our house. He had worked for it.Day by day I felt myself disappearing. For my husband I was no longer a reality, I was one of the things around him. I was the fence which needed to be replaced. I watched myself in the mirror and saw that I was mo longer vivid and exciting. I was worn and gray like an old sweater you can't throw out but won't put on.He admitted he was in love with her, but he said he loved me.Translated, that means, I want everything. Translated, that means, I don't want to hurt you yet. Translated, that means, I don't know what to do, give me time.Why, why should I give you time? What time are you giving me? I am in a cell waiting to be called for execution.I loved him and I was in love with him. I didn't use language to make a war-zone of my heart.'You're so simple and good,' he said, brushing the hair from my face.He meant, Your emotions are not complex like mine. My dilemma is poetic.But there was no dilemma. He no longer wanted me, but he wanted our lifeEventually, when he had been away with her for a few days and returned restless and conciliatory, I decided not to wait in my cell any longer. I went to where he was sleeping in another room and I asked him to leave. Very patiently he asked me to remember that the house was his home, that he couldn't be expected to make himself homeless because he was in love.'Medea did,' I said, 'and Romeo and Juliet and Cressida, and Ruth in the Bible.'He asked me to shut up. He wasn't a hero.'Then why should I be a heroine?'He didn't answer, he plucked at the blanket.I considered my choices.I could stay and be unhappy and humiliated.I could leave and be unhappy and dignified.I could Beg him to touch me again.I could live in hope and die of bitterness.I took some things and left. It wasn't easy, it was my home too.I hear he's replaced the back fence.”

“For my part, I think we need more emotion, not less. But I think, too, that we need to educate people in how to feel. Emotionalism is not the same as emotion. We cannot cut out emotion - in the economy of the human body, it is the limbic, not the neural, highway that takes precedence. We are not robots...but we act as though all our problems would be solved if only we had no emotions to cloud our judgement.”

“While I can’t have you, I long for you. I am the kind of person who would miss a train or a plane to meet you for coffee. I’d take a taxi across town to see you for ten minutes. I’d wait outside all night if I thought you would open the door in the morning. If you call me and say ‘Will you…’ my answer is ‘Yes’, before your sentence is out. I spin worlds where we could be together. I dream you. For me, imagination and desire are very close.”