“I to my friends, to my own heart, I to seek among phrases and fragments something unbroken.”

“I went from one to the other holding my sorrow - no, not my sorrow but theincomprehensible nature of this our life - for their inspection. Some people goto priests; others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek amongphrases and fragments something unbroken - I to whom there is no beauty enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch of one person with another is all,yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so imperfect, so weak, sounspeakably lonely.”

“I ask now, standing with my scissors among my flowers, Where can the shadow enter? [. . .] I am sick of the body, I am sick of my own craft, industry and cunning, of the unscrupulous ways of the mother who protects, who collects under her jealous eyes at one long table her own children, always her own.”

“There is no doubt in my mind, that I have found out how to begin (at 40) to say something in my own voice.”

“The lake of my mind, unbroken by oars, heaves placidly and soon sinks into an oily somnolence.’ That will be useful.”

“When I am grown up I shall carry a notebook—a fat book with many pages, methodically lettered. I shall enter my phrases.”

“To whom can I expose the urgency of my own passion?…There is nobody—here among these grey arches, and moaning pigeons, and cheerful games and tradition and emulation, all so skilfully organised to prevent feeling alone.”