I love your silences, they are like mine. You are the only being before whom I am not distressed by my own silences. You have a vehement silence, one feels it is charged with essences, it is a strangely alive silence, like a trap open over a well, from which one can hear the secret… Continue reading Anaïs Nin
Catch me, as if I have surely been out committing a violation against you, my sin of insisting on existing without you. ― Ana Castillo, Loverboys: Stories. (Plume (August 1, 1997)
A dark curtain seemed to rise before him, and for less than a second he looked upon the mysterious universe of moral suffering. As a landscape is seen complete, and vast, and vivid, under a flash of lightning, so he could see disclosed in a moment all the immensity of pain that can be contained… Continue reading Joseph Conrad
I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger / of my heart, I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, / with defeat. — Jorge Luis Borges, from “Two English Poems,” A Universal History of Infamy. Publishers Editorial Tor (1935) & Emecé (1954), Published in English (1972)
I wanted to come undone like gold thread, like a tent full of birds. — Sandra Cisneros, from “One Holy Night,” Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. (Random House April 3, 1991)
My, how foolish I am! You know what I’ve always thought? I’ve always thought a body would have to be sick and dying before they saw the Lord. And I imagined that when He came it would be like looking at the Baptist window: pretty as colored glass with the sun pouring through, such a… Continue reading Truman Capote
You are the poet, you walk inside my dreams… — Anaïs Nin, Under a Glass Bell (Swallow Press, 1944)
Each year is like putting a new coat over all the old ones. Sometimes I reach into the pockets of my childhood and pull things out. — Simon Van Booy, from “Little Birds,” The Secret Lives of People in Love (Turtle Point Press, 2007)
One day or one night—between my days and nights, what difference can there be?—I dreamed that there was a grain of sand on the floor of my cell. Unconcerned, I went back to sleep; I dreamed that I woke up and there were two grains of sand. Again I slept; I dreamed that now there… Continue reading Jorge Luis Borges
Stretched out side by side, we exhanged confidences, whispers, smiles. Curled up, she fell on my chest and unfolded there like a vegetation of murmurs. She sang in my ear, a little sea shell. She became humble and transparent, clutching my feet like a small animal, calm water. She was so clear I could read… Continue reading Octavio Paz
