Repression was both a great theme and a burden in her life. Her madness was a ruthless censor; it was not content only to ruin the quality of her daily life in New York, but it also effaced the past and replaced it with the white baffled noise of forgetfulness. Her journals preserved the particulars of her life. She filled them with hard facts and nothing else. They were her rose windows into the past. Writing in her journals was but one other technique Savannah has devised to save her own life.
-- Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides
