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“New York friendships are an education in the struggle between devotion to the melancholy and attraction to the expressive.”

“Once again, as it has with irregular regularity throughout my waking life, that sickening sense of language buried deep within comes coursing through arms, legs, chest, throat. If only I could make it reach the brain, the conversation with myself might perhaps begin.”

“The daydreaming, it seemed, had occupied more space than I’d ever imagined. It was as though the majority of my waking time had routinely been taken up with fantasizing, only a norrow portion of consciousness concentrated on the here and now.”

“Ever since I could remember, I had feared being found wanting. If I did the work I wanted to do, it was certain not to measure up; if I pursued the people I wanted to know, I was bound to be rejected; if I made myself as attractive as I could, I would still be ordinary looking. Around such damages to the ego a shrinking psyche had formed itself: I applied myself to my work, but only grudgingly; I’d make one move toward people I liked, but never two; I wore makeup but dressed badly. To do any or all of these things well would have been to engage heedlessly with life—love it more than I loved my fears—and this I could not do. What I could do, apparently, was daydream the years away: go on yearning for "things” to be different so that I would be different.“

"I felt my eyes turning inward, toward that thick white opacity that surrounds my heart when it comes to erotic love. ’I can’t do men,’ I said.”