Mary Bartlett

“So it's back once more, back up the slope.
Why do they always ruin my rope
with their cuts?
I felt so ready the other day,
Had a real foretaste of eternity
In my guts.

Spoonfeeding me yet another sip
from life's cup.
I don't want it, won't take any more of it.
Let me throw up.

Life is medium rare and good, I see,
And the world full of soup and bread,
But it won't pass into the blood for me,
Just goes to my head.

It makes me ill, though others it feeds;
Do see that I must deny it!
For a thousand years from now at least
I'm keeping a diet.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Best of Rilke

“The girls took into their own hands decisions better left to God. They became too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, too visionary, too blind.”
― Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

“No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax — This won't hurt”
― Hunter S. Thompson

“Anne, I don't want to live. . . . Now listen, life is lovely, but I Can't Live It. I can't even explain. I know how silly it sounds . . . but if you knew how it Felt. To be alive, yes, alive, but not be able to live it. Ay that's the rub. I am like a stone that lives . . . locked outside of all that's real. . . . Anne, do you know of such things, can you hear???? I wish, or think I wish, that I were dying of something for then I could be brave, but to be not dying, and yet . . . and yet to [be] behind a wall, watching everyone fit in where I can't, to talk behind a gray foggy wall, to live but to not reach or to reach wrong . . . to do it all wrong . . . believe me, (can you?) . . . what's wrong. I want to belong. I'm like a jew who ends up in the wrong country. I'm not a part. I'm not a member. I'm frozen.”
― Anne Sexton, Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters