We must learn from things; we have everything to learn from them. How to let things make themselves known by themselves, before any translation… — Hélène Cixous, Coming to Writing and Other Essays (Harvard University Press September 1, 1992) First published January 1, 1986.
I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river, to me you’re everything that exists; the reality of everything. ― Virginia Woolf, Night and Day ( Independently published, September 17, 2021) Originally published October 20, 1919.
All human love is a dramatic enactment of the wild, reckless, unquenchable, undrainable love that powers the universe. If death is everywhere and inescapable, then so is love, if we but knew it. We can begin to know it through each other. The tamer my love, the farther away it is from love. In fierceness,… Continue reading Jeanette Winterson
What is meant by ‘reality’? It would seem to be something very erratic, very undependable—now to be found in a dusty road, now in a scrap of newspaper in the street, now a daffodil in the sun. It lights up a group in a room and stamps some casual saying. It overwhelms one walking home… Continue reading Virginia Woolf
It was a kiss made in lonely dreams. A kiss that took its time. A kiss that felt so right she couldn’t remember all the reasons it was wrong. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips, This Heart of Mine (Avon, February 5, 2002)
Maybe you think you’ll be entitled to more happiness later by forgoing all of it now, but it doesn’t work that way. Happiness takes as much practice as unhappiness does. It’s by living that you live more. By waiting you wait more. Every waiting day makes your life a little less. Every lonely day makes… Continue reading Ann Brashares
It is one of those summer days that feel like a memory welling up in your throat. — Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper. (Washington Square Press; Reprint edition February 1, 2005)
They said: okay, it’s true, time is nothing to him, that which passes, that which flies, all that is nothing to him, doesn’t slip past or cause adherences or brackish fog – and is it precisely because we are alone in time, alone and losing at every turn, noses buried in our losses, in the… Continue reading Maylis de Kerangal
this thing that made me crazy; the way he cupped his fingers around the back of my neck, putting them just so that his thumb touched a pulse point. It’s so hard to explain, but it gave me a chill every time, almost like he was touching my heart. — Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby. (Viking… Continue reading Sarah Dessen
I am only true when I’m alone. ― Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star. (New Directions; Reissue edition February 17, 1992) Originally published January 1st 1975.
The Vale of Soul-Making 