Among The Monsters, I Am Well Hidden;

His Wedding Gift, Clasped Round My Throat. A Choker Of Rubies, Two Inches Wide, Like An Extraordinarily Precious Slit Throat.

Though I Still Turn Up My Coat-collar In A Lonely Way And Am Always Looking At Myself In Mirrors, They’re Only Habits And Give No Clue At All To My Character, Whatever That Is. The Most Difficult Performance In The World Is Acting Naturally Isn’t It? Everything Else Is Artful.

He Was Prepared To Die For It, As One Of Baudelaire's Dandies Might Have Been Prepared To Kill Himself In Order To Preserve Himself In The Condition Of A Work Of Art, For He Wanted To Make This Experience A Masterpiece Of Experience Which Absolutely Transcended The Everyday. And This Would Annihilate The Effects Of The Cruel Drug, Boredom, To Which He Was Addicted Although, Perhaps, The Element Of Boredom Which Is Implicit In An Affair So Isolated From The Real World Was Its Principle Appeal For Him.

The Notion Of A Universality Of Human Experience Is A Confidence Trick And The Notion Of A Universality Of Female Experience Is A Clever Confidence Trick.

She Stands And Moves Within The Invisible Pentacle Of Her Own Virginity. She Is An Unbroken Egg: She Is A Sealed Vessel; She Has Inside Her A Magic Space The Entrance To Which Is Shut Tight With A Plug Of Membrane; She Is A Closed System; She Does Not Know How To Shiver.