''“Perhaps I am no one. True, I have a body and I cannot escape from it. I would like to fly out of my head, but that is out of the question.” ''
''“Live or die, but dont poison everything.” ''
''“Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.” ''
''“The joy that isnt shared dies young.” ''
''“Even so, I must admire your skill. You are so gracefully insane.” ''
''“All day Ive built a lifetime and now the sun sinks to undo it. ”''
''“Anne, I dont want to live. . . . Now listen, life is lovely, but I Cant Live It. I cant even explain. I know how silly it sounds . . . but if you knew how it Felt. To be alive, yes, alive, but not be able to live it. Ay thats the rub. I am like a stone that lives . . . locked outside of all thats real. . . . Anne, do you know of such things, can you hear???? I wish, or think I wish, that I were dying of something for then I could be brave, but to be not dying, and yet . . . and yet to [be] behind a wall, watching everyone fit in where I cant, to talk behind a gray foggy wall, to live but to not reach or to reach wrong . . . to do it all wrong . . . believe me, (can you?) . . . whats wrong. I want to belong. Im like a jew who ends up in the wrong country. Im not a part. Im not a member. Im frozen.” ''
''“I am alone here in my own mind. There is no map and there is no road. It is one of a kind just as yours is.” ''
''“As it has been said: Love and a cough cannot be concealed. Even a small cough. Even a small love.”''
''“All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children.... I was trying my damnedest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one cant build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out.” ''
''“Love? Be it man. Be it woman. It must be a wave you want to glide in on, give your body to it, give your laugh to it, give, when the gravelly sand takes you, your tears to the land. To love another is something like prayer and cant be planned, you just fall into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.” ''
''“Do you like me?” No answer. Silence bounced, fell off his tongue and sat between us and clogged my throat. It slaughtered my trust. It tore cigarettes out of my mouth. We exchanged blind words, and I did not cry, I did not beg, but blackness filled my ears, blackness lunged in my heart, and something that had been good, a sort of kindly oxygen, turned into a gas oven.” ''
''“Everyone in me is a bird I am beating all my wings”''
''“I am stuffing your mouth with your promises and watching you vomit them out upon my face.” ''
''“Watch out for intellect, because it knows so much it knows nothing and leaves you hanging upside down, mouthing knowledge as your heart falls out of your mouth.” ''
''“I like you; your eyes are full of language." [Letter to Anne Clarke, July 3, 1964.]” ''
''“I am a collection of dismantled almosts.” ''
''“As for me, I am a watercolor. I wash off.” ''
''“Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins.” ''