If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again.

Is there no way out of the mind?

I desire the things that will destroy me in the end.

I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression Of something beautiful, but annihilating.

We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, me and you.

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

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

I talk to God but the sky is empty.

When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn’t know. "Oh, sure you know," the photographer said. "She wants," said Jay Cee wittily, "to be everything.

I must get my soul back from you; I am killing my flesh without it.

How we need another soul to cling to.

To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.

I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.

I am still so na ve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?

Dying is an art. Like everything else, I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I have a call.

I don’t care about anyone, and the feeling is quite obviously mutual.

I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give.

Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.

What did my arms do before they held you?

I wonder why I don't go to bed and go to sleep. But then it would be tomorrow, so I decide that no matter how tired, no matter how incoherent I am, I can skip on hour more of sleep and live.

I was supposed to be having the time of my life.

Because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street caf in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.

I want to be important. By being different. And these girls are all the same.

So many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them." (Initiation)

I felt wise and cynical as all hell.

The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

I couldn’t see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to.

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.

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.

There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them.

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.

I write only because There is a voice within me That will not be still

Out of the ash I rise with my red hair and I eat men like air.

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.

Living with him is like being told a perpetual story: his mind is the biggest, most imaginative I have ever met. I could live in its growing countries forever.

Eternity bores me, I never wanted it. From the poem "Years", 16 November 1962

I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here.

I think I made you up inside my head.

If they substituted the word 'Lust' for 'Love' in the popular songs it would come nearer the truth.

How frail the human heart must be―a mirrored pool of thought.

The floor seemed wonderfully solid. It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther.

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 you love her", I said, "you'll love somebody else someday.

What did my fingers do before they held him? What did my heart do, with its love? From " Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices", 1962

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

Ever since I was small I loved feeling somebody comb my hair. It made me go all sleepy and peaceful.

People or stars Regard me sadly, I disappoint them. From the poem "Sheep in Fog", 2 December 1962, 28 January 1963

I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow.