get off the road as quickly as you can

"Suddenly, no, at last, long last, I couldn't any more. I couldn't go on. Someone said, You can't stay here. I couldn't stay there and I couldn't go on.

"And this evening again it seems to be working, I'm in my arms, I'm holding myself in my arms, without much tenderness, but faithfully, faithfully. Sleep now, as under that ancient lamp, all twined together, tired out with so much talking, so much listening, so much toil and play."

2.

"The words too, slow, slow, the subject dies before it comes to the verb, words are stopping too."

3.

"With a cluther of limbs and organs, all that is needed to live again, to hold out a little time, I'll call that living, I'll say it's me, I'll get standing, I'll stop thinking, I'll be too busy, getting standing, staying standing, stirring about, holding out, getting to tomorrow, tomorrow week, that will be ample, a week will be ample, a week in spring, that puts the jizz in you. It's enough to will it, I'll will it, will me a body, will me a head, a little strength, a little courage, I'm starting now..."

"There you are now on your feet, I give you my word, I swear they're yours, I swear it's mine, get to work with your hands, palp your skull, seat of the understanding, without which nix, then the rest, the lower regions, you'll be needing them, and say what you're like, have a guess, what kind of man, there has be to a man, or a woman, feel between your legs, no need of beauty, nor of vigour, a week's a short stretch, no one's going to love you, don't be alarmed. No, not like that, too sudden, I gave myself a start. And to start with stop palpitating, no one's going to kill you, no one's going to love you and no one's going to kill you..."

"We spend our life, it's ours, trying to bring together in the same instant a ray of sunshine and a free bench, in some oasis of public verdure..."

4.

"...no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough... What counts is to be in the world, the posture is immaterial, so long as one is on earth. To breathe is all that is required, there is no obligation to ramble, or receive company, you may even believe yourself dead on condition you make no bones about it, what more liberal regimen could be imagined."

5.

"That is why nothing appears, all is silent, one is frightened to be born, no, one wishes one were, so as to begin to die. One, meaning me..."

6.

"...what is it, this unnamable thing that I name and name and never wear out, and I call that words. It's because I haven't hit on the right ones, the killers, haven't yet heaved them up from the heart-burning glut of words, with what words should I name my unnamable words? And yet I have high hopes, I give you my word, high hopes, that one day I may tell a story..."

"No grave, I'll be grave, I'll close my ears, close my mouth and be grave. And when they open again it may be to hear a story, tell a story, in the true sense of the words, the word hear, the word tell, the word story, I have high hopes, a little story, with living creatures coming and going on a habitable earth crammed with the dead, a brief story, with night and day coming and going above, if they stretch that far, the words that remain, and I've high hopes, I give you my word."

7.

"...or better still the dawn, waiting for the dawn and the joy of being able to say, I've got the whole day before me, to go wrong, to go right, to calm down, to give up, I've nothing to fear, my ticket is valid for life."

8.

"...the syllables, the tears, I confuse them, words and tears, my words are my tears, my eyes my mouth."

"...nothing but fantasies and hope of a story for me somehow, of having coming from somewhere and of being able to go back, or on, somehow, some day, or without hope."

9.

"What variety and at the same time what monotony, how varied it is and at the same time how, what's the word, how monotonous. What agitation and at the same time what calm, what vicissitudes within what changelessness."

"And I have no doubts, I'd get there somehow, to the way out, sooner or later, if I could say, There's a way out there, there's a way out somewhere, the rest would come, the other words, sooner or later, and the power to get there, and the way to get there, and pass out, and see the beauties of the skies, and see the stars again."

10.

"This is awful, awful, at least there's that to be thankful for."

11.

"...but it's always evening, why is that, why is it always evening, I'll say why, so as to have said it, have it behind me, an instant."

12.

"...dreaming of the night without morning, and how will he manage tomorrow, to endure tomorrow, the dawning, then the day, the same as he managed yesterday, to endure yesterday."

"...that old shame that kept me from living, the shame of my living that kept me from living..."

13.

"...and unslakable infinity of remorse delving ever deeper in its bite, at having to hear, having to say, fainter than the faintest murmur, so many lies, so many times the same lie lyingly denied... the screaming silence of no's knife in yes's wound..."