I wanted to do something to express my pleasure. So I spoke out loud, rather self-consciously. “Well, what do you know. An idea!” Or something like that. And the sound of my voice in this room with nobody but me here profoundly depressed me. 1968

What difference could there be between the situation of one person who was sane while all the rest of the world was mad, and that of one person who was mad while everyone else was sane? None. Their situations are the same. Madness and sanity the same, in isolation. 7/4/58

Ontological anxiety. “Weltangst.” The world blank—or crumbling, shredding. People are wind-up dolls. I’m afraid. 1964

Speed annihilates boredom. (Solution to key 19th century problem: Boredom.) 1975

Alfred says he feels cheated by the years of being active sexually. Feels he has deteriorated sexually, his penis is less sensitive. His whole body, too. 1960

Neo-kitsch The great contribution of the modern homosexual sensibility to eroticism. 7/8/78

The mornings are the worst. 1965

Vietnam is the first television war. A continuous happening. You are there. Americans can’t say, as the Germans could—but we didn’t know. It’s as if CBS had been at Dachau. 1966

My gestures are languid, e.g., the way I comb my hair, the pace at which I walk—Harriet is right, though not right to resent it. 1958

Nabokov talks of minor readers. “There must be minor readers because there are minor writers.” 1966

The drugged look of the dancer. He plays on the edge of equilibrium. He is a serpent and coils his body. He is a bird and revolves his arms like wings. He is an animal and stoops to all fours. 7/13/58

P persuaded me of his idea of love—that one can possess another person, that I could be an extension of his personality and he of mine. Love that incorporates, that devours the other person, that cuts the tendons of the will. Love as immolation of self. 7/14/58

(P used to enrage me because there were so many things he didn’t react to—sit in this chair or that, go to this movie or that, order this or that on the menu.) 1960

I’m afraid I’m going to make a three-hour movie that will be impossible to cut. It seems to me too ambitious, too complicated. It’s about suffering, sanctity, moral corruption, neurosis, health, love, sadism, masochism—in short, everything. I wonder if it’s worth it. 7/16/70

The huge Cadillac taxis, middle-aged men in the park fingering their amber beads, the roasted corn sellers sitting on street corners, the Greek sailors in their tight white pants and wide black sashes, strawberry sunsets behind the hills of Athens seen from the Acropolis. 7/17/58

A constriction in the chest, tears, a scream that feels as if it would be endless if I let it out. I should go away for a year. 1964

Remember: this could be my one chance, and the last, to be a first-rate writer. 7/19/77

Stories (to write): “Portrait of the Historian” “Speed” “Arguing with Angels” “And Mondays with Mahatma Gandhi” 7/20/77

Berlioz didn’t have an ideology—didn’t want to institutionalize himself. 7/21/78