“I’ve got to sleep. Sleep is my only way to escape.”

This morning when I left Mom’s parting words were, “Come straight home after school.” Wow! Like I’m going to get stoned at 3:30—it doesn’t sound so bad at that.

I’m afraid to live and afraid to die.

Sometimes I think we’re all trying to be shadows of each other, trying to buy the same records and everything even if we don’t like them. Kids are like robots, off an assembly line, and I don’t want to be a robot!

one day I’ll be old, without ever having really been young

I guess I’ll never measure up to anyone’s expectations. I surely don’t measure up to what I’d like to be.

I bet the pill is harder to get than drugs–which shows how screwed up this world really is!

How can thoughts hurt so much when they aren’t even physical?

I really am only one infinitely small part of an aching humanity.

They have accepted me as an individual, as a personality, as an entity. I belong! I am important! I am somebody!

I can’t believe that I changed so little. I expected to look old and hollow and gray, but I guess it’s only me on the inside that has shriveled and deteriorated.

Nobody’s talking to me, but nobody’s hassling me either. I guess you can’t have everything.

The voice of every kid hooked on drugs, alcohol or the occult joins the sad chorus “Not me! I didn’t think it could ever happen to me. I was sure I could handle it.

She didn’t know whether she was running away from something or running to something, but she admitted that deep in her heart she wanted to go home.

Sometimes fantasies are better than life.

Maybe the new me will be different.

I pretend I’ve got lots of confidence and I’m a big jock and like that but deep inside I’m a frightened, insecure, can’t-make-it failure.

Think you’re escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.

My concept of successful living is escaping the matrix.

The willow which bends to the tempest often escapes better than the oak which resists it.

What is hell? Hell is oneself. Hell is alone, the other figures in it Merely projections. There is nothing to escape from And nothing to escape to. One is always alone.

Every experience is a paradox in that it means to be absolute, and yet is relative; in that it somehow always goes beyond itself and yet never escapes itself.

The talk of lovers who have just declared their love is one of life’s most sweet delights. Each vies with the other in humility, in amazement at being so valued. The past is searched for the first signs and each one is in haste to declare all that he is so that no part of his being escapes the hallowing touch.

Violence is born of the desire to escape oneself.

What if I slept a little more and forgot about all this nonsense.