nin

Telephone wires only carried literal messages, never the subterranean cries of distress, of desperation. Like telegrams they delivered only final and finite blows: arrivals, departures, births and deaths, but no room for fantasies such as: Long Island is a tomb, and one more day in it would bring on suffocation. Aspirin, Irish policeman, and roses of Sharon were too gentle a cure for suffocation. (79)

Nin, Anaïs. A Spy in the House of Love. Chicago: Swallow Press, 1959.