It's not an easy read. I've never read diaries before. scattered text. unfinished thoughts. random events.
You can't rate this book the way you rate other books. My rating is based on how much I was touched by the book.

Some of my highlights (I wish I highlighted more ...)

Highlights from my kindle

"The really important thing is not to reject anything—When I think how I wavered about actually coming up to Cal! That I actually considered not accepting this new experience! How disastrous (although I would have never known!) that would have been. I’ll really know what to do in Chicago when I get there—I’ll begin right by going out and grabbing at experience, not waiting for it to come to me—I can do that now because the Great Barrier is down—the feeling of sanctity about my body—I have always been full of lust—as I am now—but I have always been placing conceptual obstacles in my own path … Secretly, I have always realized my unlimited passionateness, but no outlet seemed patterned or proper enough"

"The idea of writing has driven every idea out of my head.” … “It’s so painful to be always at the starting-point …"

"I don’t care if it’s lousy. The only way to learn how to write is to write. The excuse that what one is contemplating isn’t good enough"

"On Keeping a Journal. Superficial to understand the journal as just a receptacle for one’s private, secret thoughts—like a confidante who is deaf, dumb, and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could do to any person; I create myself. The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather—in many cases—offers an alternative to it"

"The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes. It is equivalent to a sense of abusing the present"