the night whispers to me that she is out there and that she is beautiful but all i see are shadows and stars scattered, a million orphans from horizon to horizon.
— Dark Raven
over me only the sky,
and with me, your voice.
— Anna Akhmatova, A Song
i get the strangest feeling now of our all being in the midst of some vast operation: of the splendour of this undertaking—life: of being capable of dying: an immensity surrounds me.
— Virginia Woolf, from a diary entry dated 5 August 1932 (via awritersruminations)
some people pass through your life and you never think about them again. some you think about and wonder what ever happened to them. some you wonder if they ever wonder what happened to you. and then there are some you wish you never had to think about again. but you do.
— The Wonder Years
i watched her face switch among the radio stations of memory…
— Diane Ackerman, The Zookeeper’s Wife
she stood before him and surrendered herself to him and sky, forest, and brook all came toward him in new and resplendent colors, belonged to him, and spoke to him in his own language. and instead of merely winning a woman he embraced the entire world and every star in heaven glowed within him and sparkled with joy in his soul. he had loved and had found himself. but most people love to lose themselves.
— Hermann Hesse, Demian
when your beauty struck me, it dissolved me. deep down, i am not different from you. i dreamed you, i wished for your existence. i see in you that part of me which is you. i surrender my sincerity because if i love you it means we share the same fantasies, we share the same madness.
— Anaïs Nin
it seems probable that her real creation was her own image, so that all her writings appear like notes and jottings directing attention towards that central problem—herself.
— Ted Hughes (on Sylvia Plath), May 1978
she adored all beautiful things in their every curve and fragrance, so that they became part of her. day by day, she gathered beauty; had she had no heart (she who was the bosom of womanhood) her thoughts would still have been as lilies, because the good is the beautiful.
— J.M. Barrie, The Little White Bird
i’ve always had a theory that some of us are born with nerve endings longer than our bodies.
— Joy Harjo
we follow the path of the sun into new worlds where as night falls star-guided we wander our dreams and conquer shadows.
— Dark Raven
during the sleepless hours of the night a thought came to me that seemed important. i got up in the dark and wrote it down. in the morning i read: “i went looking for loneliness. but it found me.
— Anna Kamienska, A Nest of Quiet: A Notebook (translated by Clare Cavanagh)
i’ll love you till the ocean
is folded and hung up to dry.
— W. H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening
i put it down on paper and then the ghost does not ache so much.
— Sandra Cisneros, The House On Mango Street
at that moment i was sure. that i belonged in my skin. that my organs were mine and my eyes were mine and my ears, which could only hear the silence of this night and my faint breathing, were mine, and I loved them and what they could do.
— Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity!
