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

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

“If it weren’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college.”

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

“I wish Europe would let Russia annihilate Turkey a little--not much, but enough to make it difficult to find the place again without a divining-rod or a diving-bell.”

“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.”

“Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously…. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.”

“What kind of magic potion
Did you give me from that jar?
That I forget who I am
But always know who you are…”

“I don't know how to answer. I know what I think, but words in the head are like voices underwater. They are distorted.”

“Never again I would know her slow kisses which are hardly felt. Never again the ringing mourning bells, songs of the dead that we loved.”