“To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.”

“The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air.”

“The bell. It was already time to part, to go to bed. The bell regulated everything. It gave me orders and I executed them blindly. I hated that bell. Whenever I happened to dream of a better world, I imagined a universe without a bell.”

“Not until all babies are born from glass jars will the combat cease between mother and son.”

“How did I know that someday — at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere — the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?”

“I sank back in the gray, plush seat and closed my eyes. The air of the bell jar wadded round me and I couldn't stir.”

“Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do? I don't mean the world ending with respect to me, but every set of eyes closing with mine.”

“When will the dead world cease to dream,
When will the morning break?”

“Wherever I sat — on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok — I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.”

“Nothing is really good or bad in itself — it’s all what a person thinks about it.”