You ask yourself: where are your dreams now? And you shake your head and say how swiftly the years fly by! And you ask yourself again: what have you done with your best years, then? Where have you buried the best days of your life? Have you lived or not? Look, you tell yourself, look… Continue reading Fyodor Dostoyevsky
What man of us has never felt, walking through the twilight or writing down a date from his past, that he has lost something infinite? ― Jorge Luis Borges, Dreamtigers. (University of Texas Press; 13th ed. Edition, January 1, 1985) Originally published 1960.
Deep experience is never peaceful. — Henry James, from “Madame de Mauves,” Galaxy Magazine (February/March 1874), ch. V, reprinted in A Passionate Pilgrim (1875) and later in The Madonna of the Future and Other Tales (1879) and the New York Edition of James’ works, vol. 13 (1908).
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
