“My supreme game is to imagine myself dead, devoured by worms. I close my eyes and, with incredible details of absolute, scatological precision, I see myself being slowly eaten and digested by an infernal swarm of large greenish maggots gorging themselves on my flesh.”

“My eyes rolled so far back in my head that I could see myself think”

“No offense to your father, Jim, but let's face it—the man's dead. Dead, dead, dead. Moldering in the ground, being eaten by worms, and…what's that kind of fly that lays its eggs in rotting meat? You know the ones, little white maggots wriggling everywhere. Those.”

“When things get unbearable, I wrap myself into a tight ball and shut my eyes. Every muscle in my body is tense. I open my eyes and I'm still where I was when I closed them to escape. Nothing's changed.”

“I liked beaches, swimming pools, and clinics
for there they were the bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh.
I pitied them and myself, but this will not protect me.
The word and the thought are over.”

“The more I write the less substance do I see in my work, … It is tolerably awful. And I face it, I face it but the fright is growing on me. My fortitude is shaken by the view of the monster. It does not move; its eyes are baleful; it is as still as death itself — and it will devour me. Its stare has eaten into my soul already deep, deep.”

“I can hurt myself more than anyone else can," she told her sister. "I can do it with my eyes closed.”

“It would be worth the while to look closely into the eye which has been open and seeing at such hours, and in such solitudes, its dull, yellowish, greenish eye. Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green.”

“Alexander: I myself was educated in Italy. My doctorate in philosophy is from the University of Padua.
Renne: Really? Philosophy?
Alexander: My dissertation was on worms.
Renne: Worms the philosopher?
Alexander: No, just worms.
Renne: Ah, the philosophy of worms.
Alexander: Not at all. Worms have no philosophy, as far as is known.”

“Is my imagination as important as reality? Sometimes I think YES… It's imagination that makes reality tolerable… Sometimes, I just want to close my eyes and fall in to the endless imagination…”