“The constant struggle in mature life, I think, is to accept the necessity of tragedy and conflict, and not to try to escape to some falsely simple solution which does not include these more somber complexities.”

So much working, reading, thinking, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough.

Eternity bores me, I never wanted it.

Intoxicated with madness, I’m in love with my sadness.

Aloneness and selfness are too important to betray for company.

There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.

I hate handing over money to people for doing what I could just as easily do myself, it makes me nervous.

I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I’d never seen before in my life.

The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn’t thought about it.

I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of nonfeeling, or stop questioning and criticizing life and take the easy way out.

I smile, now, thinking: we all like to think we are important enough to need psychiatrists.

I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.

Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.

Love life day by day, color by color, touch by touch.

I am dead to them, even though I once flowered.

I find that in a novel I can get more of life, perhaps not such intense life, but certainly more of life than in poetry.

So learn about life. Cut yourself a big slice with the silver server, a big slice of pie. Open your eyes. Let life happen.