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.

I began to think vodka was my drink at last. It didn’t taste like anything, but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallowers’ sword and made me feel powerful and godlike.

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.

What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.

I love my rejection slips. They show me I try.

Is anyone anywhere happy?

I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me.

How can you be so many women to so many strange people, oh you strange girl?

So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state.

I am too pure for you or anyone. From the poem "Fever 103 ", 20 October 1962

What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid. I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want.

I am sure there are things that can't be cured by a good bath but I can't think of one.

The trouble about jumping was that if you didn't pick the right number of storeys, you might still be alive when you hit bottom.

I would catch sight of some flawless man off in the distance, but as soon as he moved closer I immediately saw he wouldn’t do at all.

I have taken a pill to kill The thin Papery feeling.

It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next. It made me tired just to think of it.

Is it the sea you hear in me? Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness? Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it.

I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don't ask me who I am.

I felt dumb and subdued. Every time I tried to concentrate, my mind glided off, like a skater, into a large empty space, and pirouetted there, absently.

Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh has gone through; I dream of what it may go through.

It was my first big chance, but here I was, sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like so much water.

Please don’t expect me to always be good and kind and loving. There are times when I will be cold and thoughtless and hard to understand.

Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled “enemy?

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.

At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.

The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower.