I felt wise and cynical as all hell.
But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defensless that I couldn’t do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn’t in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get.
I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free.
The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of the throat and I’d cry for a week.
Out of the ash I rise with my red hair and I eat men like air.
I write only because There is a voice within me That will not be still.
How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.
Some things are hard to write about. After something happens to you, you go to write it down, and either you over dramatize it, or underplay it, exaggerate the wrong parts or ignore the important ones. At any rate, you never write it quite the way you want to.
I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I’m here.
And the danger is that in this move toward new horizons and far directions, that I may lose what I have now, and not find anything except loneliness.
I think I made you up inside my head.
If I didn’t think, I’d be much happier; if I didn’t have any sex organs, I wouldn’t waver on the brink of nervous emotion and tears all the time.
If they substituted the word ‘Lust’ for ‘Love’ in the popular songs it would come nearer the truth.
People or stars Regard me sadly, I disappoint them. From the poem “Sheep in Fog”, 2 December 1962, 28 January 1963.
Ever since I was small I loved feeling somebody comb my hair. It made me go all sleepy and peaceful.
So much working, reading, thinking, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough.
I love my rejection slips. They show me I try.
Is anyone anywhere happy?
There I went again, building up a glamorous picture of a man who would love me passionately the minute he met me, and all out of a few prosy nothings.