“I was myself the compass of that sea:
I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.”

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Wanderer and Burns Living Flowers, p. 619
The Host (2008)

Card I : The Magician http://www.sacred-texts.com/tarot/sot/sot02.htm <br class="br">The Symbolism of the Tarot (1913) <br class="br">Context: I Saw the Man.<br>His figure reached from earth to heaven and was clad in a purple mantle. He stood deep in foliage and flowers and his head, on which was the head-band of an initiate, seemed to disappear mysteriously in infinity.<br>Before him on a cube-shaped altar were four symbols of magic — the sceptre, the cup, the sword and the pentacle.<br>His right hand pointed to heaven, his left to earth. Under his mantle he wore a white tunic girded with a serpent swallowing its tail.<br>His face was luminous and serene, and, when his eyes met mine, I felt that he saw most intimate recesses of my soul. I saw myself reflected in him as in a mirror and in his eyes I seemed to look upon myself.<br>And I heard a voice saying:<br>—&quot;Look, this is the Great Magician!

Variant: I want movement, not a calm course of existence. I want excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I feel in myself a superabundance of energy which finds no outlet in our quiet life.
Source: Family Happiness

Source: Into the Wild

Aleph (2011)

Ibid., p. 66
The Book of Disquiet
Original: Foi só um momento, e vi-me. Depois já não sei sequer dizer o que fui.

Source: Lit From Within: Tending Your Soul For Lifelong Beauty

March 25, 1933
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
Context: I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic — in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.