Ernest Hemingway
I want nothing. I just want the emptiness to mean something. — Ernest Hemingway, The Complete Short Stories (Scribner, 1987)
Category: Short Stories
G.K. Chesterton
The winter afternoon was reddening towards evening, and already: ruby light was rolled over the bloomless beds, filling them, as it were, with the ghosts of the dead roses. – G.K. Chesterton, from “The Flying Stars,” The Complete Father Brown (Penguin, 1981)
Jorge Luis Borges
A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face. —… Continue reading Jorge Luis Borges
Ray Bradbury
I live in a well. I live like smoke in the well. Like vapor in a stone throat. I don’t move. I don’t do anything but wait. Overhead I see the cold stars of night and morning, and I see the sun. And sometimes I sing old songs of this world when it was young.… Continue reading Ray Bradbury
Vladimir Nabokov
My love for you was the throbbing, welling warmth of tears. That is how I imagined paradise: silence and tears, and the warm silk of your knees. This you could not comprehend. — Vladimir Nabokov, Beneficence (Stories of Vladimir Nabokov) Knopf 24 October 1995.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Killing myself was a matter of such indifference to me that I felt like waiting for a moment when it would make some difference. ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (Kessinger Publishing, LLC, June 17, 2004) Originally published 1877.
Clive Barker
There’s no conscious thing on the face of the world that doesn’t know dread more intimately than its own heartbeat. ― Clive Barker, Books of Blood: Volume Two. (Berkley Books September 1986)
Clarice Lispector
But after much thought, I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing more difficult in this world than to surrender completely. This is one of man’s greatest sorrows. ― Clarice Lispector, Selected Cronicas. (New Directions November 17, 1996)
Virginia Woolf
The melancholy river bears us on. When the moon comes through the trailing willow boughs, I see your face, I hear your voice and the bird singing as we pass the osier bed. What are you whispering? Sorrow, sorrow. Joy, joy. Woven together, like reeds in moonlight. — Virginia Woolf, from “The String Quartet,” Monday… Continue reading Virginia Woolf
Shannon Celebi
Let’s call my mood melancholy; let’s call it remembrance. Or maybe let’s call it longing. Yes, let’s call it longing instead. ― Shannon Celebi, Small Town Demons. (CFH May 1, 2014)
The Vale of Soul-Making 