The water you touch in a river is the last of that which has passed, and the first of that which is coming. Thus it is with time present. Life, if well spent, is long. ― Leonardo da Vinci, Leonardo’s Notebooks (Black Dog & Leventhal August 1, 2005) First published January 1, 1519.
Life’s splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come. — Franz Kafka, Diaries of Franz… Continue reading Franz Kafka
Mirror of the night.Your eyes green swords insidemy flesh… Your word travels the entirety ofspace and reaches my cellswhich are my stars, then goes toyours which are my light. —Frida Kahlo, to Diego from The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-portrait (Abrams, August 9, 2005) Originally published January 1, 1995.
The catalog of emotion that disappears when someone dies, and the degree to which we rely on a few people to record something of what life was to them, is almost too much to bear. — Sarah Manguso, Ongoingness: The End of a Diary. (Graywolf Press; 1St Edition edition March 3, 2015)
I love her for what she has dared to be, for her hardness, her cruelty, her egoism, her perverseness, her demoniac destructiveness. She would crush me to ashes without hesitation. She is a personality created to the limit. I worship her courage to hurt, and I am willing to be sacrificed to it. She will… Continue reading Anaïs Nin
If those whom we begin to love could know us as we were before meeting them … they could perceive what they have made of us. — Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959, trans. Ryan Bloom (Ivan R. Dee, 2008)
Let’s face it: I’m scared, scared and frozen. First, I guess I’m afraid for myself… the old primitive urge for survival. It’s getting so I live every moment with terrible intensity. It all flowed over me with a screaming ache of pain… remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it,… Continue reading Sylvia Plath
Everything will go—the afternoon, the sun, life:evil, which cannot be undone, will prevail.Only you will stay, inseparablesister of the twilight of my life. — Pablo Neruda, The Complete Memoirs: Expanded Edition Edition ( Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021)
The night looked so vast, the earth so lonely! — Pablo Neruda, The Complete Memoirs: Expanded Edition ( Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021)
You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else. Your bare… Continue reading Paul Auster
The Vale of Soul-Making 