Let them think what they liked, but I didn’t mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank — but that’s not the same thing. ― Joseph Conrad, from “The Secret Sharer,” The Secret Sharer and other stories. (Phoenix (an Imprint of The Orion Publishing Group Ltd), May 6, 1999) Originally published 1909.
It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight. — Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories. (Dover Publications; Unabridged edition, 1997) Originally published 1892.
It was a marvelous night, the sort of night one only experiences when one is young. The sky was so bright, and there were so many stars that, gazing upward, one couldn’t help wondering how so many whimsical, wicked people could live under such a sky. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky, from “White Nights” (1848), White Nights… Continue reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky
This web of time–the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries–embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not, and yet in others both of us exist. In this… Continue reading Jorge Luis Borges
Perhaps love is to give one’s own solitude to others? For it is the very last thing we have to offer. — Clarice Lispector, from “The Gift,” Selected Crônicas. (New Directions, November 17, 1996)
I want shade, I want shade and anonymity. — Clarice Lispector, from “The Departure,” The Complete Stories. (New Directions; Reprint edition, July 31, 2015)
I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it. — Franz Kafka, Dearest Father: Stories And Other Writings. Translation by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins. Schocken Books; 1st edition (1954)
