I have arranged my little life.
And then the days came when I was alone.
I found when I was a child that if I put the hurt into words, it would go.
When I think about it, if I had to choose, I’d rather be happy than write.
Sometimes the Earth trembles; sometimes you can feel it breathe.
There is always the other side, always.
The perpetual hunger to be beautiful and that thirst to be loved which is the real curse of Eve.
If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heaven. No more damned magic.
I sit at my window and the words fly past me like birds – with God’s help I catch some.
Love was a terrible thing. You poisoned it and stabbed at it and knocked it down into the mud – well down – and it got up and staggered on, bleeding and muddy and awful. Like – like Rasputin.
Something came out from my heart into my throat and then into my eyes.
And what does anyone know about traitors, or why Judas did what he did?
I have been here five days. I have decided on a place to eat in at midday, a place to eat in at night, a place to have my drink in after dinner. I have arranged my little life.
Now at last I know why I was brought here and what I have to do.
I took the red dress down and put it against myself. ‘Does it make me look intemperate and unchaste?’ I said.
But they never last, the golden days. And it can be sad, the sun in the afternoon, can’t it? Yes, it can be sad, the afternoon sun, sad and frightening.
The musty smell, the bugs, the lonliness, this room, which is part of the street outside-this is all I want from life.
Every word I say has chains round its ankles; every thought I think is weighted with heavy weights.
It’s so easy to make a person who hasn’t got anything seem wrong.
It was the darkness that got you. It was heavy darkness, greasy and compelling. It made walls round you, and shut you in so that you felt like you could not breathe.