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

“It was my first big chance, but here I was, sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like so much water.”

“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.”

“And I sit here without identity: faceless. My head aches.”

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

“...it wouldn't have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.”

“And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closesIts bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.--from "Tulips", written 18 March 1961”