My Bell Jar

"I don’t ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside me there’ll always be the person I am tonight."

"I know I will never be happy but I know I can be gay."

"I want you to know that you are the single greatest blessing I have ever received. I mean I don’t know why we were put here on this earth. I don’t know what they want from us, except I have always known that I am supposed to be by your side and taking care of you and having a family with you and making you happy. In a universe that is like ninety-nine per cent dissapointment you are the one sure thing. You are the proof that life is good. You are my life."

"I’m never going to accomplish anything; that’s perfectly clear to me. I’m never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don’t do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don’t even do that any more."

"Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy."

"But jealous souls will not be answer’d so;
They are not ever jealous for the cause,
But jealous for they are jealous. It is a monster
Begot upon itself, born on itself."

"Is there no way out of the mind?"

"Unfortunately, we must choose reality, but in the end it crushes us and disappoints. My view of reality is that it has always been a grim place to be [he pauses, then lets out a little laugh], but it’s the only place you can get Chinese food."

"It had never occurred to me that our lives, which had been so closely interwoven, could unravel with such speed. If I’d known, maybe I’d have kept tighter hold of them and not let unseen tides pull us apart."

"

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—-Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

"