“So, now I shall talk every night. To myself. To the moon. I shall walk, as I did tonight, jealous of my loneliness, in the blue-silver of the cold moon, shining brilliantly on the drifts of fresh-fallen snow, with the myriad sparkles. I talk to myself and look at the dark trees, blessedly neutral. So much easier than facing people, than having to look happy, invulnerable, clever. With masks down, I walk, talking to the moon, to the neutral impersonal force that does not hear, but merely accepts my being. And does not smite me down.”

“There is a certain unique and strange delight about walking down an empty street alone. There is an off-focus light cast by the moon, and the streetlights are part of the spotlight apparatus on a bare stage set up for you to walk through. You get a feeling of being listened to, so you talk aloud, softly, to see how it sounds.”

“I have fallen a long way. Clouds are floweringBlue and mystical over the face of the starsInside the church, the saints will all be blue,Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews,Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.And the message of the yew tree is blackness - blackness and silence.”

“The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,White as a knuckle and terribly upset.It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quietWith the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.--from "The Moon and the Yew Tree", written 22 October 1961”

“I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.”

“At about this point I began to feel peculiar. I looked round me at all the rows of rapt little heads with the same silver glow on them at the front and the same black shadow on them at the back, and they looked like nothing more or less than a lot of stupid moon-brains. I felt in terrible danger of puking. I didn’t know whether it was the awful movie giving me a stomach-ache or all that caviar I had eaten.”

“No, I won't try to escape myself by losing myself in artificial chatter 'Did you have a nice vacation?' 'Oh, yes, and you?' I'll stay here and try to pin that loneliness down.”