Anne Sexton
I feel lonely for the sound of your voice.[…]I seem to be a ship that is sailing out of my own life. — Anne Sexton – From a letter to Anne Clarke, Published in A Self-Portrait In Letters ( Houghton Mifflin: Boston, January 1, 1977)
Category: Epistolary
Franz Kafka
I have this vision: That I would finally come and find you. Scattered pieces of distance would not stand in my way. Not needing words; the barest of glimpses would suffice for you and me. – Franz Kafka, Letters To Milena (Schocken; Rev Upd edition April 7, 1990)
Vladimir Nabokov
…my Lolita remarked: “You know, what’s so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own”; and it struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my darling’s mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile cliches, there was in her… Continue reading Vladimir Nabokov
Rainer Maria Rilke
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet. Sidgwick and Jackson (January 1, 1945)
Marcel Proust
I have built, deep in my heart, a chapel filled with you. — Marcel Proust, , in a letter to Anatole France, Selected Letters: 1880-1903. (Univ of Chicago Pr (Tx) November 1988)
Vincent van Gogh
So instead of giving in to despair I chose active melancholy, in so far as I was capable of activity, in other words I chose the kind of melancholy that hopes, that strives and that seeks, in preference to the melancholy that despairs numbly and in distress. — Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent… Continue reading Vincent van Gogh
Vladimir Nabokov
Humbert’s Wanted” Poem Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.Age: five thousand three hundred days.Profession: none, or “starlet.” Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze?Why are you hiding, darling?(I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze,I cannot get out, said the starling). Where are you riding, Dolores Haze?What make is the magic carpet?Is a… Continue reading Vladimir Nabokov
Simone Weil
The joy of meeting and the sorrow of separation … we should welcome these gifts … with our whole soul, and experience to the full, and with the same gratitude, all the sweetness or bitterness as the case may be. Meeting and separation are two forms of friendship that contain the same good, in the… Continue reading Simone Weil
Albert Camus
I’m waiting for you, I’m waiting for the evening calm, I’m waiting for our time, the oblique light, this pause between day and night. Peace will come, surely. But I can imagine no other peace than that of our two bodies bound together, of our gaze given over to each other – I have no… Continue reading Albert Camus
Rainer Maria Rilke
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love. — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet. Sidgwick and Jackson (January 1, 1945)
The Vale of Soul-Making 