“In all the mad incongruity, the turgid stultiloquy of life, I felt, at least, securely anchored to myself. Whatever the vacillations of other people, I thought myself terrifically constant. But now, here I am, dragging a frayed line, and my anchor gone.”

“I’d been tossing on the seas for twenty-eight years, I was used to flipping around on the waves by myself,bailing out the water like a mad fool.How did I get used to an anchor?What if that anchor broke off?”

“A life without pain: it was the very thing I had dreamed of for years, but now that I had it, I couldn’t find a place for myself within it. A clear gap separated me from it, and this caused me great confusion. I felt as if I were not anchored to this world - this world that I had hated so passionately until then; this world that I had continued to revile for its unfairness and injustice; this world where at least I knew who I was. Now the world ceased to be the world, and I had ceased to be me.”

“So - here I am in the dark alone,There's nobody here to see;I think to myself, I play to myself,And nobody knows what I say to myself;Here I am in the dark alone,What is it going to be?I can think whatever I like to think,I can play whatever I like to play,I can laugh whatever I like to laugh,There's nobody here but me.”

“All through my life the counsel to depend on prayer has been prized above almost any other advice I have ever received. It has become an integral part of me, an anchor, a constant source of strength and the basis of my knowledge of things divine.”

“Alone in my room, wrapped in a blanket, I whimpered and talked aloud to myself, recalling the lost glory of my youth when I considered myself, and was considered by others, a bright and capable person. It seemed that was all gone now.”