“I love him to hell and back and heaven and back, and have and do and will.”

“At twenty I tried to dieAnd get back, back, back to you.I thought even the bones would do.--from "Daddy", written 12 October 1962”

“I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give.”

“I am sending back the keythat let me into bluebeard's study; because he would make love to meI am sending back the key;in his eye's darkroom I can seemy X-rayed heart, dissected body:I am sending back the keythat let me into bluebeard s study.”

“I should have loved a thunderbird instead;At least when spring comes they roar back again.I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

“I am afraid. I am not solid, but hollow. I feel behind my eyes a numb, paralyzed cavern, a pit of hell, a mimicking nothingness. I never thought, I never wrote, I never suffered. I want to kill myself, to escape from responsibility, to crawl back abjectly into the womb. I do not know who I am, where I am going - and I am the one who has to decide the answers to these hideous questions.”

“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”