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The idea that my brains could be untangled, straightened out, and thus refashioned into a state of peace and sanity was a comforting fantasy.

It's easy to tell the dirtiest minds — look for the cleanest fingernails.

Anyway, I don't trust those people who poke around sad people's minds and tell them how interesting it all is up there. It's not interesting. My mother was mean and that dog was nice. One doesn't need a college degree.

That is what I imagined life to be — one long sentence of waiting out the clock.

It also concerned me that my demise would have no great impact, that I could blow my head off and people would say, "That's all right. Let's get something to eat."

Other girls were married by my age, had children, settled. To say I didn't want all that would be too generous. All that simply wasn't available to me. It was beyond me.

I wasn't interested in rock 'n' roll back then — most rock songs made me want to slit my wrists, made me feel there was a wonderful party happening somewhere, and I was missing it.

I don't give a rat's ass what people think. But it is good if they think well of you. That has its advantages.

I wasn't interested in fun or popularity back then.

But there was nothing really so wrong or terrible about my aappearance. I was young and fine, average, I guess. But at the time I thought I was the worst — ugly, disgusting, unfit for the world. In such a state it seemed ridiculous to call attention to myself. I rarely wore jewelry, never perfume, and I didn't paint my nails.

I hated almost everything, I was very unhappy and angry all the time. I tried to control myself, and that only made me more awkward, unhappier, and angrier.

"God is a made-up story," our mother told us, "like Santa Claus. There is nobody watching you when you're alone. You decide for yourself what's right and wrong. There are no prizes for good little girls. If you want something, fight for it. Don't be a fool."

In any case, this woman was beautiful and looked vaguely familiar in the way all beautiful people look familiar.

My father had warned me when I’d started there at age twenty-one, naive beyond reproach, that the most dangerous individuals in a prison are not the criminals but the very people who work there.

I’m too old to concern myself with other people’s affairs.

I’ve lived with many alcoholic men over the years, and each has taught me that it is useless to worry, fruitless to ask why, suicide to try to help them. They are who they are, for better and worse.

Icicles hung from the rafter over the front door, and I stood there imagining them cracking and darting through my breasts, slicing through the thick gristle of my shoulder like bullets or cleaving my brain into pieces.