“I am not going to lie down and weep away a life of care.”

“I am tied down with single words. But you wander off; you slip away; you rise up higher, with words and words in phrases.”

“There is, then, a world immune from change. But I am not composed enough, standing on tiptoe on the verge of fire, still scorched by the hot breath, afraid of the door opening and the leap of the tiger, to make even one sentence. What I say is perpetually contradicted. Each time the door opens I am interrupted. I am not yet twenty-one. I am to be broken. I am to be derided all my life. I am to be cast up and down among these men and women, with their twitching faces, with their lying tongues, like a cork on a rough sea. Like a ribbon of weed I am flung far every time the door opens. I am the foam that sweeps and fills the uttermost rims of the rocks with whiteness; I am also a girl, here in this room.”

“Oh, I am in love with life!”

“Now then is my chance to find out what is of great importance, and Imust be careful, and tell no lies.”

“It would be a comfort, she felt, to lean; to sit down; yes, to lie down; never, never, never to get up again.”

“I would go with you through the fires of death. Yet am happiest alone.”