“If I am a witch, then so be it, I said. And I took to eating black things–coffee, dark chiles, the bruised part of fruit, the darkest, blackest things to make me hard and strong.”— Sandra Cisneros, from Woman Hollering Creek; “Eyes of Zapata,” c. 1991
“Well, the more I feel, the more I seem to be capable of feeling. It scares me a little because if I keep on, some day I’ll feel so much that it will probably kill me.”— Tennessee Williams, from Selected Stories; “In Memory of an Aristocrat,”
“There’s too much to let go of and too much to keep.”— Tennessee Williams, from Selected Stories; “Oriflamme,” c. January 1944
“Living is longing, and it could be that what was lost is greater than everything you grasped, and that you only really live when you have the courage to lose things,”— Max Frisch, tr. by Mike Mitchell, from “An Answer from the Silence,”
“I poured every sun upon you and every night and every silence and every longing,”— Friedrich Nietzsche, from The Complete Works: “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,”
“Let him feel the tongues of longing,”— Paul Celan, tr. by Michael Hamburger, from “In Memoriam: Paul Éluard,”
It means “Fuck you I love you I am loving the fact that you exist in the world at all I love the way you make me feel I love the way you make people around you feel I love the way you experience yourself separately and I love what you’re doing what you’re loving what you are and fuck you I love you I love the way sunlight hits your face sometimes and you just smile and absorb your own sensations and then let them go I love the way you float in my gaze I love you irrespective of anything I love you in terms of solely loving you fuck you I am so lucky to have loved you I am always going to let you in even when we are pushing each other away consciously or subconsciously for a reason or without a reason I love the way I can just breathe when I’m with you I love the communicating part and I love the sharing part and I love your silences because they’re very much like mine and I love your words because they come from within I can swear they come from within and I love your chaos and I love your simplicity I just love you because it’s inevitable not loving you and you’re basically mesmerizingly fleeting and special and just one second I’ve abused language already too much but: I love you because I need not a reason. But most of all because it’s you. We’re growing up together and I feel that and we’re messing things up together but it feels fucking good to be doing just so and I love you, God, I love you. I love you because it’s you. Also, because it’s us. But mostly because it’s you. Finally, because fuck you you’re love itself and I feel that and it’s terrifying and it has nothing to do with me perhaps but yeah I’m exhausted and yet I don’t see myself ever getting to be exhausted enough…I love you”
“Do I sound “Hedonistic”? How can I help it with you? You invite romantic dreams, “the skin one loves to touch”, nocturnal emissions and God knows what.”— Henry Miller, from Dear, Dear Brenda: The Love Letters Of Henry Miller to Brenda Venus
“I have loved, really loved, a few people and it always seemed to be tragic or something equally neurotic. When I am with you I feel happy. I guess that sentence says the whole thing and says what I meant in the first place. It isn’t only that you make no demands on me as a woman but that you don’t feel you have to and yet I still feel like a woman. Well, damn it, there isn’t anything wrong with a wild romantic fantasy and it is the warmest blurting forth to tell you that I feel comfortable with you AND that you attract me (all at once). What I meant is simply that I love you…but I’m not in love with you…that it isn’t necessary to be IN love with you. Maybe you don’t know it, damn it…but there aren’t many around like you (not any). You make me happy but that doesn’t meant I own any of you. None of that is fantasy.”— Anne Sexton, from A Self-Portrait In Letters
“I am sick to death of you waiting about in empty houses and apartments with your ears strained for the telephone to ring. Snap out of it, girl! You’ve carried on this hole in corner, overcharged, romantic, unrealistic nonsense long enough. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Other people need you…Stop wasting your time on someone who only really says tender things to you when he’s drunk. Unpack your sense of humor, and get on with living and ENJOY IT.”— Noël Coward, from a letter to Marlene Dietrich written c. March 1956