“Let me not be sentimental, let the distance in time give me humor and irony and a shrewd, if loving, eye.”

“let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences”

“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.”

“Let me fly with you.”

“Let me sit in a flowerpot,The spiders won't notice. My heart is a stopped geranium.”

“I thought if only I had a keen, shapely bone structure to my face or could discuss politics shrewdly or was a famous writer Constantin might find me interesting enough to sleep with. And then I wondered if as soon as he came to like me he would sink into ordinariness, and if as soon as he came to love me I would find fault, the way I did with Buddy Willard and the boys before him.”

“Let me not be weak and tell others how bleeding I am internally; how day by day it drips, and gathers, and congeals.”