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Quotes from Letters

“This sickness is incurable and it is called: soul.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Olga Kolbasine-Chernova, dated January 8, 1925, in: “The Same Solitude” by Catherine Ciepiela

“I have nothing to expect, and little to fear, in life – There are wounds that can never be healed – but they may be allowed to fester in silence without wincing.”

– Mary Wollstonecraft (1759—1797), from a letter to Gilbert Imlay (1754—1828), Tonsberg, dated July 30, 1795, in: “The Love Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay”

“The state of being alone was my religion. You have become the center of my life, the goddess of one who does not believe in anything, the greatest happiness and unhappiness ever encountered.”

– Emil Cioran (1911—1995), from a letter to Friedgard Thoma, in: “Um nichts in der Welt”, translated from the Romanian translation by Christina Tudor-Sideri

“Follow me into this depth, into which we must descend with courage. But I would love to have you close to me! I’ve never felt as unhappy as I am now. I’m really touching the lowest point of my desperate loneliness. I swear it to you…”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated July 22, 1929, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“How good it would be if I could cry my eyes out on your chest, my heart is so sore. I could cry out like a wounded animal, I feel so torn and full of pain.”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated January 28, 1942, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevang

“My always beloved: I swear, my love, I give you my true word of honor, that I have just finished kneeling before the statue of Our Lord of the Stations of the Cross, full of tears, to pray that you always love me, that you never forget me, and like me always; you can’t imagine, dear love, how painful was your great indifference toward me, as you showed it today so very clearly. How you rejected me, how cold you were toward your “little baby’!

I swear by everything I hold dear that all day long I haven’t been able to accept that it is possible to stop loving a person one professed to love so much! I can’t accept it. I haven’t eaten anything, nor do I feel like eating, the only thing I want to do is cry (except for the desire to be with you!); believe me, my eyes hurt from crying, I can’t convince myself that you may forget me, that you may stop loving your “little doll’. No, my little darling! You couldn’t have forgotten me?! You couldn’t have stopped loving me?!”

– Ophelia Queiroz (1900—1991), from a letter to Fernando Pessoa (1888—1935), dated March 20, 1920, 11:30 P.M., in: “In praise of Ophelia: an interpretation of Pessoa’s only love” by Alexandrino E. Severino and Hubert D. Jennings / “Pessoa Plural. A journal Of Pessoa Studies. №4″, 2013

“I should be always physically near you, no; it’s enough that you feel me near inside your heart, as before, always near; and that when you will not feel any longer that way, you’ll tell me, honestly, as a soul as noble and pure as yours cannot but do. This is it. Without false pity. Because I have a strong and proud spirit, and I can close with firm hand the door to life and shut myself up, mute in my grief and in death.”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated April 5, 1929, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“The more I loved what I had possessed, the more I must grieve for what I have lost, and the most exquisite joy and pleasure must end in the extreme of sorrow.”

– Héloïse d’Argenteuil (1101? —1163/4?), from a letter to Pierre Abelard (1079—1142), in: “The Letters of Heloise and Abelard. A translation of their correspondence and related writings”, translated from the French by Mary Martin McLaughlin with Bonnie Wheeler

“No, it is not silly to embrace each other on New Year’s day: on the contrary, it is good and it is nice. I thank you for having thought of it and I kiss you on your beautiful big eyes.”

– George Sand (1804—1876), from a letter to Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), Nohant, dated January 2, 1868, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“… those red roseleaf lips of yours should have been made no less for music and song than for

madness of kissing. Your slim gilt soul walks between passion and poetry.”

– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas (1870—1945), dated? January, 1893, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters” by Merlin Holland

“We suffer from one thing only: Absurdity. But it is formidable and universal.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated November 14, 1871, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“I hope you are in bed – asleep – not thinking – just feeling what I feel – Our togetherness which nothing can disturb. – Maybe I’m old enough to have learned how stupid I can be! – You dearest Sweet One – Good Night – I kiss you & love you much – ”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Boston, Massachusetts, dated September 3, 1926, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“Without you, dearest dearest I couldn’t see or hear or feel or think – or live – I love you so and I’m never in all our lives going to let us be apart another night. It’s like begging for mercy of a storm or killing Beauty or growing old, without you. I want to kiss you so – and in the back where your dear hair starts and your chest – I love you – and I cant tell you how much – To think that I’ll die without your knowing – Goofo, you’ve got to try [to] feel how much I do – how inanimate I am when you’re gone – I can’t even hate these damnable people – nobodys got any right to live but us – and they’re dirtying up our world and I can’t hate them because I want you so – Come Quick – Come Quick to me – I could never do without you if you hated me and were covered with sores like a leper – if you ran away with another woman and starved me and beat me – I still would want you I know—

Lover, Lover, Darling – ”

– Zelda Fitzgerald (1900—1948), from a letter to Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896—1940), Westport, Connecticut, dated September 1920, in: “Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda. The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald”

“Give me the lips – I know they are waiting – ”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), New York City, dated late June, 1918, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“I will love you with all my heart & that surely is a good deal to say in this wicked world.”

– John Miller (1819—1895), from a letter to Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821—1895), Philadelphia, dated February 19, 1855, in: “If You Love That Lady Don’t Marry Her: The Courtship Letters of Sally Mcdowell and John Miller, 1854—1856″

“At night I painfully rack my brains to think up some means of salvation. But I can’t see anything.”

– Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), from a letter to his brother Nikolay Bulgakov (1989—1966), Moscow, dated February 21, 1930, in: “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis

“So you are still working frantically? Unhappy one! you don’t know the ineffable pleasure of doing nothing! And how good work will seem to me after it! I shall delay it however as long as possible.”

– George Sand (1804—1876), from a letter to Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), Nohant, dated July 4, 1873, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“– May I kiss you? For a kiss is no more than an embrace, and to embrace without kissing is almost impossible!”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), dated Summer, 1926, in: “A Russian Psyche: The Poetic Mind Of Marina Tsvetaeva” by Alyssa W. Dinega

“Your letter this morning is the biggest letter I ever got – Some way or other it seems as if it is the biggest thing anyone ever said to me – and that it should come this morning when I am wondering – no I’m not exactly wondering but what I have been thinking in words – is—

I’ll be damned and I want to damn every other person in this little spot – like a nasty petty little sore of some kind – on the wonderful plains. The plains – the wonderful great big sky – makes me want to breathe so deep that I’ll break – There is so much of it – I want to get outside of it all – I would if I could – even if it killed me – ”

– Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1886), from a letter to Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), Canyon, Texas, dated September 3, 1916, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“Now I have – as expected – some difficulties with him. His complete dependency on me here makes things worse. I have now for the first time understood the nature of his trouble & with it, my incapacity of dealing with it. He wants to be maltreated.”

– Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein (1882—1958), from a letter to Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889—1951), dated end of 1942, in: “Wittgensten’s Family letters. Corresponding with Ludwig”, translated from the German by Peter Winslow

“I miss not having you in the room when I read and not having you to come home to when I finish my day’s work. I really can’t express it but maybe you will understand. We share so much besides our physical attraction for each other that the physical is minimized tremendously when we are separated. When I feel a sudden pang of loneliness for you it’s because I miss the sight of you and the sound of you and the feeling that you are nearby when I need you the most, and how much I love you.”

– Captain Hunnicutt, from a letter to Virginia Dickerson, Monday, New Caledonia, dated August 17, 1942, in: “Dearest Virginia. Love Letters from a Cavalry Officer in the South Pacific”, edited by Gayle Hunnicutt

“I already love in you your beauty, but I am only beginning to love in you that which is eternal and ever previous – your heat, your soul. Beauty one could get to know and fall in love with in one hour and cease to love it as speedily; but the soul one must learn to know. Believe me, nothing on earth is given without labour, even love, the most beautiful and natural of feelings.”

– Leo Tolstoy (1828—1910), from a letter to Valeria Arseneva (1836—1909), dated November 2, 1856, in: “Tolstoi’s Love Letters: With A Study On The Autobiographical Elements In Tolstoi’s Work.”

“You have the knack for saying just the right thing. What you say only you can say. Inimitable. Superb. Seductive. Sensual. Considerate as cherubim. Sure, you have that thing between your legs as so all women, but with you it becomes an invisible jewel, a magic touchstone, a golden Easter Egg like from the beginning of the Universe. Guard it sacredly. Worship it in private – and in public pretend it isn’t there. Pretend that there you carry an opium pipe or whatever.”

– Henry Miller (1891—1980), from a letter to Brenda Venus (born 1947), dated January 27, 11:30 PM, 1979, in: “Dear, Dear Brenda: The Love Letters of Henry Miller to Brenda Venus”

“I too wonder why I love you. Is it because you are a great man or a charming being? I don’t know. What is certain is that I experience a PARTICULAR sentiment for you and I cannot define it.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated January, 1867, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“Everything that keeps me away from you is exile. I have to somehow be ‘happy’ again or to collapse. Yet my decline is because of you. I find it mystifying and necessary.”

– Emil Cioran (1911—1995), from a letter to Friedgard Thoma, featured in her autobiography “Um nichts in der Welt”, translated from the Romanian translation by Christina Tudor-Sideri

“I liked the poem because it was like you. Simplicity tinged with melodrama. You’re a darling!”

– Iris Murdoch (1919—1999), from a letter to Frank Thompson (1918—1989), Oxford, dated early Summer 1940, in: “Iris Murdoch, a Writer At War. Letters and Diaries, 1939—1945″

“I will stop for today and hope and pray that you, beloved, are healthy and optimistic. I hug you most dearly, kiss you in my usual way and then long indescribably for you.”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated July 22, 1941, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange

“Everything goes through the soul and back to the soul.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Abram Vishnyak (1895—1943), in: “Florentine nights. Nine Letters With a Tenth Kept Back and an Eleventh Received”, featured in: “Possession without a touch: letters of Marina Tsvetaeva”, written in and translated from the Russian by Natalija Arlauskaite

“Twelve hours ago we were still together. Yesterday at this very hour I still held you in my arms… Do you remember? How distant it all is already! The night is now warm and gentle. I hear the great tulip tree by my window tremble in the wind and, raising my head, see the moon’s reflection on the water.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to Louise Colet (1810—1876), in: “Rage and fire: a life of Louise Colet, pioneer feminist, literary star, Flaubert’s muse” by Francine du Plessix Gray

“I’ve only one thing I want to live for and I do want to see you again, but I don’t know what will happen to me. You are going to stay away so long. Oh!”

– Carrie Hughes (1873—1938), from a letter to Langston Hughes (1902—1967), Oberlin, Ohio, dated 1935, in: “My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes’s Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926—1938”

“Yes, Sweetheart, I know you have been wanting to talk to me about many things. I didn’t encourage you because I hadn’t clarity enough myself – or was it inner quiet owing to my physically being unequal to what I demand from myself – so others too demand. Sometimes

talking gets in the way. Things are said which are not understood – they hurt – instead of clarifying. – So words become poison. – The beginning of our togetherness was much simpler than it became later. – That does not mean that our togetherness of today isn’t much deeper – really “finer” – than the togetherness of the first days. As I wrote you yesterday those were days of a great innocence – both you & I. In spirit I know you have lost nothing – nor have I lost anything. We have both grown greatly – one thro’ the other. – Singly neither would have grown

so strong. But the question of practical daily living is not as simple as it was – or we thought it was. And we are both older. – Even you can’t do many things you could ten years ago. Maybe you did things then you shouldn’t have done… But there is no going back – Our work shows our spirit – We can see what we have “gained” – what we may have “lost” – We have grown – that I know.”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated July 13, 1928, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“It’s a sin loving like that, absolutely and with the delirium…”

– Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), from a letter to Doris Dana (1920—2006), dated December 1, 1949, in “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena

“Today I was hoping for news from you again; I thought there would be some but nothing came. Well, I hope perhaps on Monday. I am alone and am just very full of yearning for you.”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated Saturday evening, 2/8/1941, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange

“My love, oh, my love, there’s nothing to dread when you’re with me – so I am writing this in vain, am I not? Everything will be all right, won’t it, my life?”

– Vladimir Nabokov (1899—1977), from a letter to Vera Nabokov (1902—1991), Prague, dated August 24, 1924, in: “Letters to Vera”, edited and translated from the Russian by Olga Voronina and Brian Boyd

“You are reading now I am thinking of your voice.”

– Paul Celan (1920—1970), from a letter to Ingeborg Bachmann (1926—1973), dated January 11, 1958

“I am so lonely I can hardly bear it. As one needs happiness so have I needed love; that is the deepest need of the human spirit. And as I love you utterly, so have you now become the whole world of my spirit. It is beside and beyond anything that you can ever do for me; it lies in what you are, dear love – to me so infinitely lovely that to be near you, to see you, hear you, is now the only happiness, the only life, I know. How long these hours are alone!

Yet is good for me to know the measure of my love and need, that I may at least be brought to so govern myself as never to lose the love and trust that you have given me.

Dear Frances, let us make and keep our love more beautiful than any love has ever been before.”

– Rockwell Kent (1882—1971), from a letter to his wife, Frances, dated 1926

“I have your letter, your dear letter that does me good with every word, that touches me as with a wave, so strong and surging, that surrounds me as with gardens and builds up heavens about me…”

– Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), from a letter to Lou Andreas-Salomé (1861—1937), dated 1900, in: “Letters Of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892—1910”, translated from the German by Bannard Greene

“Art is expectation. When there is no more to expect all is over. Like love.”

– Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), Leningrad, dated April 11, 1954, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“I do not know if one ought to surrender oneself so entirely to another human being. But you have over me a supernatural power against which it would be futile to fight. Do not abuse your power; you could easily make me unhappy, and I would have no weapons against you. Above all, I beseech you, never banish your slave from you.”

– A.W. Schlegel (1767—1845), from a letter to Germaine de Staël (1766—1817), Coppet, dated October 18, 1805, in: “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper

“I have been so flattered and stimulated by your letter that I seem to want to write you not a sheet, but a whole ream.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Dmitry Grigorovich (1822—1900), Moscow, dated March 28, 1886, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“I am amazed by the immediacy of your understanding and its affinity to mine-instantaneous, developing parallel to mine, always confidently guiding you…”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Moscow, dated November 30, 1948, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“… we’re from opposite races, from very different backgrounds and opposing worldviews and sentiments. But despite all that I love you, just like that, though I’m not hopeful. This doesn’t prevent me from loving you.”

– Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), from a letter to Doris Dana (1920—2006), dated November 28, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena

“Beloved, forgive the typing errors because of the dusk. I am ashamed that today I have only written about myself and my worries – that happens when letters don’t arrive! I embrace you now very lovingly, kiss you many times in the usual way…”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated Saturday evening, August 2, 1941, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange

“… being an eminent author is not so great a delight… it’s a gloomy life. Work from morning to night, and not much sense to it. … Money – as scarce as hen’s teeth.

But perhaps I want no one except you when I place poppies, a great many poppies, and memory, just as much as memory…”

– Paul Celan (1920—1970), from a letter to Ingeborg Bachmann (1926—1973), dated June 20, 1949

“While I – that is, all the years until now – was sure we would meet, it never would have entered my head or my hand to thus make you visible – to me and to others. You were my secret – from all eyes, even my own. And only when I closed my eyes – did I sec you – and I saw nothing else. 1 opened my eyes – into yours. It turns out that now I simply – have pulled you out of myself – and set you against the wall – like an artist sets up a canvas – maybe farther – and stepped back.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer Maria Rilke”, translated from the Russian by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“excuse my dark writing… my love for you is different from your love for me; it’s of a very different type and category. Excuse those pages, dear. And for a few moments try to transport yourself to a soul who learned the bad habit of suffering and of having no hope in this world”

– Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), from a letter to Doris Dana (1920—2006), dated December 1, 1949, in “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena

“Can one live peaceably, you say, when the human race is so absurd? I submit, while saying to myself that perhaps I am as absurd as every one else and that it is time to turn my mind to correcting myself.”

– George Sand (1804—1876), from a letter to Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), Nohant, dated January 25, 1872, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“Physically I am ‘okay,’ as they say these days – mentally, too, though I am terribly exhausted spiritually. I want to say ‘mortally,’ ‘irreparably,’ for there is a limit to all things.”

– Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), Leningrad, dated May 27, 1953, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“Sorrow is better than joy – and even in mirth the heart is sad – and it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasts, for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.”

– Vincent Van Gogh (1853—1890), from a letter to his brother, Theo Van Gogh (1857—1891), dated October 31, 1876, in: “The Letters Of Vincent Van Gogh”, translated from the French and Dutch by Arnold Pomerans

“You wanted a written promise, my adorable friend, you thought I would hesitate to give it: here it is: I declare that you have all rights over me and that I have none over you. Dispose of my person and of my life. Order, defend, I will obey you in everything. I aspire to no other happiness than the one you wish to give me; I want to possess nothing, I want everything I have to come from your generosity. I would willingly agree to think no longer of my fame, so as to dedicate exclusively to your particular use whatever knowledge and talents I may have. I am proud of belonging to you and being your property.”

“My most dearly beloved treasure, I haven’t had any further news from you for a week, but just now I have such a longing for you so I am writing.”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated March 26, 1942, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevang

“I think I am getting to the point where words are inadequate. I love you.”

– Captain Hunnicutt, from a letter to Virginia Dickerson, dated January 19, 1944 – V-mail

in: “Dearest Virginia. Love Letters from a Cavalry Officer in the South Pacific”, edited by Gayle Hunnicutt

“A month and a half ago I quarreled with Zina and left her. At first I was miserable, but soon I was once more stunned by the noise, the deafening clamor of freedom, its vivacity, movement, color. And this lives beside us. What happens to it when we are not alone? I found myself transformed; once more I had faith in the future.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), referring to his second wife, Zinaida, from a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Moscow, dated June 8, 1941, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“What bliss of resurrection I felt to see the marvellous loops of your handwriting after so many years, which seem to be capable of protecting the Celestial Garden which the Angel (now become redundant) bearing a blazing sword keeps watch over. Your kindness in writing to me like this, and so quickly (qui cito dat, bis dat) brought back to me ancient feelings that you have since martyred a little.”

– Marcel Proust (1871—1922), from a letter to Anna de Noailles (1876—1933), dated 1919 (http://theesotericcuriosa.blogspot.com/)

“I do not care for the body, I love the timid soul, the blushing, shrinking soul; it hides, for it is afraid…”

– Emily Dickinson (1830—1886), from a letter to Abiah Root, dated January 2, 1851

“I want to come to you, because of the new Marina who can emerge only with you, in you…”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), in: “A Russian Psyche: The Poetic Mind Of Marina Tsvetaeva” by Alyssa W. Dinega

“Goodnight dear. If you were in my bed it might be the back of your head I was touching, where the hair is short, or it might be up in the front where it makes little caves above your head. But wherever it was, it would be the sweetest place, the sweetest place”

– Zelda Fitzgerald (1900—1948), from a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896—1940), dated 1931, in: “Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda. The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald”

“I embrace you and love you; I am happy. Sometimes when holding you in my arms, I regret not being able to be entirely yours; but when I consult only my heart, I tell myself that nothing can add to my feeling, and that I need nothing more to declare myself yours forever.”

– Prosper de Barante (1782—1866), from a letter to Germaine de Staël (1766—1817), Geneva, dated end of August, 1805, in: “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper

“Still, we have the same solitude, the same journeys and searching, and the same favorite turns in the labyrinth of literature…”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), in: “The Same Solitude”, by Catherine Ciepiela

“… do you think, that one can love two people in the same way and that one can experience two identical sensations about them? I don’t think so, since our individuality changes at every moment of its existence.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated January, 1867

in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“God’s earth is good. It is only we on it who are bad.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Alexey Suvorin (1834—1912), Moscow, dated December 9, 1889, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“You beautiful one – I know we belong to each other – A sweet kiss – Remember me to all. I’m with you – ”

“Dear, dear boy, you are more to me than any one of them has any idea; you are the atmosphere of beauty through which I see life; you are the incarnation of all lovely things. When we are out of tune, all colour goes from things for me, but we are never really out of tune. I think of you day and night.”

– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas (1870—1945), dated August 13, 1894, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters” by Merlin Holland

How poor are words in conveying the heights of splendor as I would like to! Yet how rich are our hearts that they can feel – no, more, experience – these splendors! How wonderful it is that even in the most contradictory surroundings we can hold fast to this precious treasure in its fullness! And how glorious that two people like us are able, despite the poverty of speech and despite all other obstacles, to share it fully with one another!”

– Eberhard Arnold (1883—1935), from a letter to Emmy von Hollander (1884—1980), dated March 30, 1907, in: “Love letters. Eberhard Arnold and Emmy von Hollander”

“You should always protest against injustice and folly, you should bawl, froth at the mouth, and smash when you can.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), Croisset, dated September 5, 1873, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“ – A very warm and quiet kiss goes to you – and something much much more – something like a river running deep down under the surface of the earth – ”

– Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), from a letter to Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), Portage, Wisconsin, dated July 27, 1928, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“At every moment of my life, God knows, I have always feared of ending you, not God. I have tried to please you, rather than him. It was your command and not the love of God that led me to the religious life. See how unhappy, how unspeakably wretched, is the life that I am living, if I endure all this for nothing here, and can look forward to no future reward. For a long time my pretense has deceived you, as it has deceived many others, into mistaking hypocrisy for piety. So you ardently commend yourself to my prayers, demanding of me what I expect of you. Do not, I beg you, have such confidence in me that you cease helping me by your prayers. Do not, I beg you, think that I am healthy and so withdraw the grace of healing from me. Do not believe that I am not in need and put off aiding me in my necessity. Do not consider me strong, or I may collapse and fall before you can sustain me.”

“Write soon and remember all the time that I love you.”

– Captain Hunnicutt, from a letter to Virginia Dickerson, dated January 11, 1944, in: “Dearest Virginia. Love Letters from a Cavalry Officer in the South Pacific”, edited by Gayle Hunnicutt

“My treasure,

Got up to pen you a few words as you are occupying my mind like an incubus.”

– Henry Miller (1891—1980), from a letter to Brenda Venus (born 1947), dated January 27, 11:30 PM, 1978, in: “Dear, Dear Brenda: The Love Letters of Henry Miller to Brenda Venus”

“Boris, I do not write true letters. The real ones don’t even touch the paper.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), in: “A Russian Psyche: The Poetic Mind Of Marina Tsvetaeva” by Alyssa W. Dinega

“I’m in a happier state than I’ve experienced since your departure – yes, truly, it’s happiness, and the best kind, this strength of love that I feel between us, this close bond uniting us amid all this gloom. I love you so. I’m not thinking about the day when I’ll see you again, any more than I ever evoke our past – I too am blocked against all memory. But I don’t need to see you – I’m not separated from you, I’m still in the same world as you.”

– Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986), from a letter to Jean-Paul Sartre (1905—1980), Paris, dated Thursday, September 7, 1939, in: “Letters to Sartre”, translated from the French by Quintin Hoare

“I am reading now books on hygiene. Oh! but they are comic! What assurance physicians have! what effrontery! what asses for the most part! I have just finished the Gaule poetique of Marchangy (the enemy of Beranger). This book gave me hysterics.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated February 28, 1874, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“Come for me this evening… I will be loving you until then just to stay patient. See you this evening! Oh, this evening will be everything!

I will give myself to you completely.”

– Juliette Drouet (1806—1883), from a letter to Victor Hugo (1802—1885), dated February 16, 1833, in: “My beloved Toto: letters from Juliette Drouet to Victor Hugo, 1833—1882″, translated from the French by Victoria Tietze Larson

“You should not worry too much about me; this is still a very advantageous patch here on earth to be living on.”

– Werner Heisenberg (1901—1976), from a letter to Elisabeth Heisenberg (1914—1998), Hechingen, dated March 9, 1945, in: “My Dear Li. Werner and Elisabeth Heisenberg. Correspondence 1937—1946″, translated from the German by Irene Heisenberg

“A kiss Sweetestheart. – The mails are very cruel. I do hope nothing has gone wrong—

or that you are ill in any way. – All crazy ideas shoot thro one’s head!”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated July 4, 1929, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“At times I feel I have not matured at the same level with my dreams. I find myself rootless and abandoned like a stone… Without love, there is no meaning to life nor to art…”

– Mona Sa’udi (born 1945), from a letter to the editor, dated September 6, 1975, in: “Women of the Fertile Crescent: an anthology of modern poetry by Arab women”, edited by Kamal Boullata

“My Dear

I was so happy to hear you this A.M. I am just so very happy now, and I came back to bed and proceeded to write you at once.”

– Carrie Hughes (1873—1938), from a letter to Langston Hughes (1902—1967), dated August, 22, 1933, in: “My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes’s Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926—1938”

“Sweetheart, I never could believe that you could feel that there could be anyone way down in the depth of all I am but you – ”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Boston, Massachusetts, dated September 3, 1926, in: My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“… our love will never change, & we feel that & our prayers for each other continue.”

– Alexandra Feodorovna (the last Empress of Russia, 1872—1918), from a letter to Ernest Louis (Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine, 1868—1937), dated April, 1915

“Sometimes lying in bed is pleasant – and one sort – waited for, longed for.”

– Leoš Janáček (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Janáček (1891—1935), dated December 31, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“Good Night my Dear Little One – Just a gentle Good Night kiss – very tender – ”

– Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), from a letter to Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), Madison, Wisconsin, dated July 22, 1928, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“Although our books were open, we spoke more of love than of learning. There were more kisses than conferences. Our hands went more often to one another’s breasts than to our texts. If, to avoid suspicion, I sometimes struck her, my blows were the marks not of anger but of the tender affection that is sweeter than any perfume. Need I say more? In our passion we neglected no stage of love and if love could invent anything new, we added it. The less we had experienced these raptures, the more ardently we pursued them and the less our desire was quenched by them.”

– Pierre Abelard (1079—1142), from a letter to a friend. Letter 1: A Story of Calamities, in: “The Letters of Heloise and Abelard: A Translation of Their Collected Correspondence and Related Writings”

“I love to hear from you, but I realize you are busy and don’t have time to write, but you love me just the same don’t you?”

– Carrie Hughes (1873—1938), from a letter to Langston Hughes (1902—1967), dated May 13 [sic], 1933, in: “My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes’s Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926—1938”

“I know more and more how much deeper you have gone into me even than my beginning – It is as tho I have had nothing else but the feeling of big open spaces – —My love to you dearest – I think we both understand – even tho we are both very difficult at times – I have wept a handkerchief wet over this…”

– Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), from a letter to Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), En route from Lake George, New York, to Chicago, Illinois, dated July 12, 1928, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“I have come back home very sad and discouraged with everything. I’m suffering, I’m weeping, I’m lamenting loudly and softly – to God, to you – and I would like to die once and for all, to be finished with all the misery, all the disappointments, all the pains. It’s as though my happiness has vanished with the fine days, and to expect them to come back – both it and them – would be almost madness, for as I look around myself and inside myself I find the season late for fine days and happy days.”

– Juliette Drouet (1806—1883), from a letter to Victor Hugo (1802—1885), dated February, 1933, in: “My beloved Toto: letters from Juliette Drouet to Victor Hugo, 1833—1882″, translated from the French by Victoria Tietze Larson

“You are a flower about to open and fully opened at the same time.”

– Henry Miller (1891—1980), from a letter to Brenda Venus (born 1947), dated August 2, 1978, in: “Dear, Dear Brenda: The Love Letters of Henry Miller to Brenda Venus”

“I don’t need to have you write me about Shakespeare! Write me about yourself.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960),from a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Moscow, dated January 22, 1945, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“Time itself does not ‘console,’ as people say superficially; at best it assigns things to their proper place and creates an order.”

– Rainer Maria Rilke (1875- 1926), from a letter to Countess Margot Sizzo-Noris-Crouy, dated January 6, 1923, in: “The Dark Interval. Rainer Maria Rilke. Letters on Loss, Grief and Transformation”, translated by Ulrich Baer

“I am petrified to be left alone with myself. All the beasts of my cage wake up to tear me to pieces. And I do not know how to placate them.”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated July 5, 1928, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“We must believe that we love one another a great deal, for we both had the same thought at the same time.”

– George Sand (1804—1876), from a letter to Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), Nohant, dated February 8, 1867, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“…you are enjoying the rare fortune of being passionately loved…”

– Germaine de Staël (1766—1817), quoting Thecla, in a letter to O’Donnel, Coppet, dated 6 August, at midnight, 1808, in “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper

“I was the more convinced that this girl would yield to me readily because I was so well aware of her knowledge and her love of literary studies. This would mean that, even when we were parted, the exchange of letters could bring us together, and since it is often possible to write more boldly than one can speak, we could always converse delightfully with one another.”

“Once more Good Night – I would like to come with the wind & take a peep of you when you are sound asleep – & slip away again with the wind – & you would never know. – ”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, August 26, 1926, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“My love, I never felt our love more strongly than that evening at Les Vikings, where you gazed at me so tenderly I felt like weeping.”

– Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986), from a letter to Jean-Paul Sartre (1905—1980), dated Tuesday, January 6, 1930, in “Letters to Sartre”, translated from the French by Quintin Hoare

“I would like to offer you only joy, to surround you with a continuous and warm felicity in exchange for all that you’ve given me in the prodigality of your love. I am afraid of being cold, selfish, and yet God only knows what is churning in me at this hour.”

“You are not like me! You are full of compassion. There are days when I choke with wrath, I would like to drown my contemporaries in latrines, or at least deluge their cockscombs with torrents of abuse, cataracts of invectives. Why? I wonder myself.”

“Good Night – I do miss you – You certainly know that – don’t you feel it way down in the root of you – & I know you miss me. – Yes, I know it.”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated August 26, 1926, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“For some reason this letter is not turning out right, and I sense (and such feelings never deceive) that you are reading it with coldness and alienation.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Chistopol, July 18, 1942, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“Your letter – tiny – tiny handwriting – lovely – purity itself – but so heartbreakingly sad.”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), New York City, dated February 11, 1918, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“I beg your pardon for impressing the idea that I was hurt at any remark of yours. You must excuse me for having been so unfortunate. You have never irritated me, and I never expect you to do anything that will, as I know how sweet your temper is and how much you love me.”

– Nathaniel Dawson (1829—1895), from a letter to Elodie Todd (1840—1877), Manassas Junction, dated September 2, 1861, in: “Practical Strangers. The Courtship Correspondence of Nathaniel Dawson and Elodie Todd, Sister of Mary Todd Lincoln”, edited by Stephen Berry and Angela Esco Elder

“I have not been entirely well for a week. I took a cold, I dont know how, which has singularly for me taken the form of a cough, that annoys me a little. Dont make yourself uneasy about me. If it really becomes anything serious I shall write to you everyday – if not, then my not writing everyday will be satisfactory proof so far that I am well.”

– Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821—1895), from a letter to John Miller (1819—1895), dated Tuesday, May 2, 1855, in: “If You Love That Lady Don’t Marry Her: The Courtship Letters of Sally Mcdowell and John Miller, 1854—1856″

“8:30 p.m. Eyes or no eyes – I don’t want to go to bed without dropping you a few lines.”

“I wonder if I shall love you as much as face to face as I do in this ‘letter-garb’.”

– Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821—1895), from a letter to John Miller (1819—1895), dated July 12, 1855, in: “If You Love That Lady Don’t Marry Her: The Courtship Letters of Sally Mcdowell and John Miller, 1854—1856″

“From me to you nothing should flow. Fly, yes!”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“Darling,

I am just waiting for you to write. But I have heard nothing. Will you please write.”

– Carrie Hughes (1873—1938), from a letter to Langston Hughes (1902—1967), New York, N.Y., dated October 29, 1928, in: “My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes’s Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926—1938”

“Little One… I try to imagine what you are doing – what is going on in the Room and I just know I can’t – One never can – All I know is that I have a great fondness for you and your understanding my having to do this makes me feel you are again very good to me – ”

“I want your, your news, of you, about your days; I want to see you, to follow you, to feel myself near you!

I picture so many things, I hear your voice, I know every expression of your face, all your gestures and your movements, how you turn your eyes and how you glance as you talk to one person or another; l could tell you everything about yourself, every slightest motion of your soul, every deeply concealed fold of your thought, the whole “momentariness” of life that goes through you without the time to register even in yourself or to appear for one instant in your awareness. But you don’t tell me anything and I don’t know anything. I continue my imagining in emptiness: “will it be so?” or “will it be true?” But I don’t know where you have your breakfast, whether in the hotel or in the store or in some restaurant…

I am no longer able to see you, and you can hardly imagine how much I suffer because of it.”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated March 3, 1930, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“The writers of the dictionary are foolish enough to try to define love. It can’t be done. The way I feel defies all definition and explanation. When I say I love you, what I feel is, without you, there is nothing. Everything would be a meaningless void. I wish I knew a pretty poem or quotation to close with but I’m at a loss.”

– Mike Royko (1932—1997), from a letter to Carol Joyce Duckman (1934—1979), postmarked August 13, 1954, in: “Royko in Love: Mike’s Letters to Carol”, by Mike Royko and David Royko

“I am truly, without exception, the most ungrateful individual on the face of this earth, and fully deserve whatever torture the Inferno has in store. (I forget what particular form they take.) I’m extremely sorry I didn’t reply at once. I had an incredible amount of work & just cut out writing to anyone.”

– Iris Murdoch (1919—1999), from a letter to Frank Thompson (1918—1989), Oxford, dated early Summer, 1940, in: “Iris Murdoch, a Writer At War. Letters and Diaries, 1939—1945″

“Do you not believe that love like ours is immortal and will only be fully realized in a more beautiful existence adapted to the fine development of what here is called affection? If the world were peopled with inhabitants as nearly perfect as you are, omnipotence would not have inflicted death upon man as a means of refining him for a better existence.”

– Nathaniel Dawson (1829—1895), from a letter to Elodie Todd (1840—1877), Bolivar Heights, dated May 19, 1861, in: “Practical Strangers. The Courtship Correspondence of Nathaniel Dawson and Elodie Todd, Sister of Mary Todd Lincoln”, edited by Stephen Berry and Angela Esco Elder

“… how secret and dual my life is, how dispersed, how full of contradictions. I have been supremely happy in recent months, yet I despair when I see how impotent this inner state is to influence the outer state.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Moscow, dated January 7, 1953, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“ – I’m all tired – all over – Tired in my head – all of me – The tired in my head is bad. – ”

– Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), from a letter to Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), Canyon, Texas, dated January 14, 1918, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“… the true truth is this: you are my creature, my creature, my creature, in which all my spirit lives with the very power of my creation, so much so that it has become your thing and you are all my life. And the true truth is that I am not old, but young, the youngest of all, in my mind as well as in my heart; in my blood, in my muscles, in my nerves… I am you, as you desire me, and if you do not want me anymore, I – by myself – I am nothing anymore, and living is no longer possible for me.”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated March 1, 1930, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“My thoughts are with you, you’re fully around me, invisible, necessary as air. You’re mine…

You’re passionate, I too; two fires – what a flame that would be!.. And we should write in blood now!!”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated May 5, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“I keep imagining our reunion and seeing each other again, and then I am as strong as iron, I stretch up tall and say ‘And yet, despite everything, the day of our reunion will come.’ A thousand sweet loving kisses.”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated January, 28, 1942, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevang

“I assure you that there is only one pleasure: learning what one does not know, and one happiness: loving the exceptions. Therefore I love you and I embrace you tenderly.”

– George Sand (1804—1876), from a letter to Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), Nohant, dated May 9, 1867, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“Do not forget me, for the love of God! Remember that, from far away, I’ll be always near you with my whole soul, in the wings, to delight in your voice, to follow each gesture, each movement, each expression of yours; to laugh if you laugh, to weep if you weep. No human creature has ever attached his own life to that of another creature as I did to yours. Always remember this.”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated September 27, 1929, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“You tell me… to write you every day, and if I do not I know you will reproach me. But the very idea that you want a letter every morning will prevent me from writing me! Let me love you in my manner… Don’t force me to do anything, and I shall do everything. Understand me and don’t reproach me. If I thought you were frivolous and stupid, like other women, I would inundate you with promises, oaths… but I prefer to express less, not more, than the true feelings of my heart. A thousand kisses, everywhere, everywhere…”

“Absence lessens half hearted passions and increases great ones, as the wind puts out the candles and yet stirs up the fire.”

– Mike Royko (1932—1997), from a letter to Carol Joyce Duckman (1934—1979), postmarked April 22, 1954, in: “Royko in Love: Mike’s Letters to Carol”, by Mike Royko and David Royko

“We, who live here and now, are not for a moment satisfied in the time-world nor confined in it; we incessantly flow over and over to those who preceded us, to our origin, and to those who seemingly come after us.”

– Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), from a letter to Witold Hulewicz, dated November 13, 1925, in: “The Dark Interval. Rainer Maria Rilke. Letters on Loss, Grief and Transformation”, translated from the German by Ulrich Baer

“I must smile – You’re sweet – all of you – outside & inside – touchable & untouchable – Above all that center about which no one knows – still does – A kiss! And more – Good Morning.”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated July 24, 1928, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“I behold you without clouds. I see you the way I imagined you”

– Germaine de Staël (1766—1817), from a letter to O’Donnel, Coppet, dated 12 July, 1808, in: “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper

“I love you so very much that I can hardly contain myself. I love you.”

– Captain Hunnicutt, from a letter to Virginia Dickerson, dated July 13, 1944 – V-mail, in: “Dearest Virginia. Love Letters from a Cavalry Officer in the South Pacific”, edited by Gayle Hunnicutt

“Please don’t be angry with me for the fragmentary and belated letters I have sent of late. I cannot begin to describe how complicated and full of care my life is. Half of my ‘replies’ are rush ones, a series of meaningless and reiterated exclamations. Naturally they annoy you.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Moscow, dated July 8, 1941, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“Dear, why don’t you love me. Why aren’t we more loving and chummy. Why don’t you ever confide in me.”

“ – It’s pouring now – And there is a fog – the streets are slushy & slippery – the gutters little rivers – pneumonia weather.”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), New York City, dated January 15, 1918, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“How good and kind you are!

And not well. That is the worst.”

– Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806—1861), from a letter to John Ruskin (1819—1900), dated December 24, 1855, in: “The Life and Work of John Ruskin” by William Gershom Collingwood

“It’s night again – and I want to write big but only have a few sheets of paper and may not go to town to get any for some time so I guess I had better write little.”

– Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), from a letter to Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), Canyon, Texas, dated January 31, 1918, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“I want terribly to speak with you. My soul is in upheaval. I don’t want to see anyone but you, because you are the only one I can talk to.”

“I feel like calling you right now… What would I say if I called? I don’t know. I guess I’d say I love you. Maybe I should be content with just writing it and wait ‘til we can be together before I say it. Maybe as you said, people can fall out of love but the only way I could stop loving you would be to stop breathing. I’ve felt this way for so long I don’t remember when it started. I felt this way when there was no hope and then I learned that there is always hope. How could I ever stop. Maybe if I knew I would so I could find out what it’s like to live and feel normal. Other people don’t seem to react the way I do… One fellow I work with… met a girl, their love was mutual and they live happily ever after. It sounds too easy but I guess it’s possible. I must have been one of the people who were born to live a complicated life. Come to think of it, you are too.”

– Mike Royko (1932—1997), from a letter to Carol Joyce Duckman (1934—1979), postmarked May 13, 1954, in: “Royko in Love: Mike’s Letters to Carol”, by Mike Royko and David Royko

“Miracles, after all, do happen! And it is a miracle that certain people waft such joyous grace on others.”

– Andrey Bely (1880—1934), from a letter to Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), dated June, 1922, in: “No Love Without Poetry. The Memoirs of Marina Tsvetaeva’s Daughter” by Ariadna Efron, edited and translated from the Russian by Diane Nemec Ignashev

“One more milestone, one more year to your record. Dear One may you always know naught but joy and your path strewn with blessings, good wishes, love and peace. May you never know real sorrow, but instead so live that contentment will crown your whole life.”

“If I had not had you, I should most likely have turned into a block of wood; but now I am a human being again.”

– Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821—1881), from a letter to Maria Issayeva, dated June 4, 1855, in: “Fyodor Dostoevsky: Memoirs, Letters and Autobiographical Novels”, translated from the Russian by Ethel Colburn Mayne, John Middleton Murry, and S.S. Koteliansky

“Have you more courage than I have? Give me some of it?”

– George Sand (1804—1876), from a letter to Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), at Nohant, dated September 6, 1871, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“So you can’t, you don’t want to say ‘Ty’ [casual form of ‘you’] to me? And I say ‘Ty’ to you all the time. You’ll say it too one day, I know. As for me, my fondness, my love for you, won’t pass, and neither, you hope, will yours for me. You need strong love and I’m happy that you’ve kindled in me such strong and undying love.”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated May 5, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“How long a time it is since I saw your good firm writing! How long it is since we

have talked together! What a pity that we should live so far from each other! I need you very much.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), Croisset, dated 1870, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“Darling,

Tell me one thing. I want it answered so much that I can hardly bear to think of a whole week passing before you can reply?

Could you love me so much that if the whole world turned against us,& we were obliged to live alone, given up by society you could live entirely in me?

Could I ever become all the world to you?”

– John Miller (1819—1895), from a letter to Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821—1895), dated February 21, 1855, in: “If You Love That Lady Don’t Marry Her: The Courtship Letters of Sally Mcdowell and John Miller, 1854—1856″

“I have missed very much hearing from you. I am so accustomed to getting letters from you when you are away that when I get none I feel as if you had dropped down into a hole from which you could not throw me up any letters.”

– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated August 7, 1935, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”

“Write me I am so lonesome.”

– Carrie Hughes (1873—1938), from a letter to Langston Hughes (1902—1967), Atlantic City, N. J., dated February, 1926, in: “My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes’s Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926—1938”

“I don’t write to you, I am quite troubled in the depths of my soul. But that will pass, I hope…”

“I have the unfortunate ability to read the very depths of hearts.”

– Germaine de Staël (1766—1817), from a letter to Benjamin Constant (1767—1830), Coppet, dated April 17, I815, in: “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper

“Don’t be upset by all of this, regardless. Better days are coming. But it is a sad return on so much work, deprivation, and suffering. Alas, life is miserable!”

– Arthur Rimbaud (1854—1891), from a letter to his Mother, Marie Catherine, Aden, dated April 30, 1891, in: “I Promise to be Good. The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud”, translated from the French by Watt Mason

“You speak of my desire to gratify all of your wishes. It is the greatest pleasure I have to think that I can do so, but you must remember how little I have done, and how you almost denied me the pleasure of doing even that little, and how chary you have been in permitting it.”

– Nathaniel Dawson (1829—1895), from a letter to Elodie Todd (1840—1877), Winchester, Virginia, dated July 11, 1861, in: “Practical Strangers. The Courtship Correspondence of Nathaniel Dawson and Elodie Todd, Sister of Mary Todd Lincoln”, edited by Stephen Berry and Angela Esco Elder

“Dearest Boy:

Oh! I wish I could see you tonight. I am lonely. Oh! So lonesome to see you. You & I are most always apart. May be that is the way of the world. It is best to only see a little of those we love best!”

“Neither the heart nor the mind can embrace what is happening. One thrusts away

the days as if into an already packed suitcase, but they don’t fit in.”

– Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), Leningrad, dated July 12, 1941, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“At last I come to tell you that I am yours. And I pray God to bless us not only in each other but to each other, and to grant us His favor and protection in the important step we are about to take.”

– Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821—1895), from a letter to John Miller (1819—1895), dated April 30, 1855, in: “If You Love That Lady Don’t Marry Her: The Courtship Letters of Sally Mcdowell and John Miller, 1854—1856″

“Today, at last, your letter arrived and I’m a human being again, after days of worry and anxiety. I don’t know why but this time I was particularly worried about you.”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Prague, dated January 14, 1942, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange

“Why is woman so jealous of expressing her feelings, so guarded in telling the promptings of her heart? If it were treason to love you, I could be found guilty from any one of my letters for I cannot conceal the fact. Probably you do not like my style of writing, but I cannot help it & even as my wife I would love & write to you as passionately.”

– Nathaniel Dawson (1829—1895), from a letter to Elodie Todd (1840—1877), Camp near Lynchburg, dated May 9, 1861, in: “Practical Strangers. The Courtship Correspondence of Nathaniel Dawson and Elodie Todd, Sister of Mary Todd Lincoln”, edited by Stephen Berry and Angela Esco Elder

“I love you the way I love certain memories.”

– Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), from a letter to Doris Dana (1920—2006), dated November 28, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena

“… I no longer have any personal interest of my own; all my interests

are identical with yours, because my present ambition – and the only purpose for which I drag on this horrible existence (horrible because far from you) – is this: to strive with all my forces (and they are still many!) to make you rich and in control of your destiny, in Art as much as in life.”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated March 1, 1930, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“I get out very little and am nearly crazy being so lonely, sometimes.”

– Carrie Hughes (1873—1938), from a letter to Langston Hughes (1902—1967), dated February 3, 1938, in: “My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes’s Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926—1938”

“I don’t have qualities, only fragilities. But sometimes… sometimes I have hope.”

– Clarice Lispector, from a letter to Olga Borelli, dated December 11, 1970, in: “Why This World. A Biography of Clarice Lispector” by Benjamin Moser

“Writing to you is never a burden to me, as evening draws in I feel I must have my chat with you.”

– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated June 4, 1935, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”

“It’s midnight, everyone’s asleep, my radio is softly playing, cigarette’s burning, so I’m all set to write. I sort of like the idea of writing when it’s late because then I know exactly what you’re doing and I can visualize you very vividly. This may sound crazy but do you curl up when you sleep? Hug the pillow, or what? I seem to always write this time of night so since I know that you’re sleeping I want my vision to be as realistic as possible.”

– Mike Royko (1932—1997), from a letter to Carol Joyce Duckman (1934—1979), postmarked April 28, 1954, in “Royko in Love: Mike’s Letters to Carol”, by Mike Royko and David Royko

“I read with ecstasy your dear words about your loving me. You write: ‘Love me.’ But don’t I love you? It’s just that expressing myself in words sickens me, but you could see a lot for yourself, but it’s too bad that you are unable to see. […] And my ecstasy and delight are inexhaustible. […] So as to finish this tirade, I swear that I am dying to kiss every toe on your foot, and I’ll achieve my goal, you’ll see. You write: ‘But what if someone reads our letters?’ Let them, of course; let them be envious.”

– Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821—1881), from a letter to his wife, Anna Dostoevskaya (1846—1918), dated August 28, 1879

“Good Morning Faraway Nearest One:

It’s just six.”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated September 23, 1923, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“It is not only your mind that attaches me to you, it is above all your excellent heart.”

– Joseph Fouche (1759—1820), from a letter to Germaine de Staël (1766—1817), Paris, dated March 24, 1815, in “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper

“Today I was hoping for news from you again; I thought there would be some but nothing came. Well, I hope perhaps on Monday. I am alone and am just very full of yearning for you.”

“Well you must have dreamt, dreamt at least, that you were my wife, when I dreamt, perhaps the same day, but also only dreamt, that you were standing close to me in some room, in a salon, so

close that I was unutterably hot; then I didn’t know, did I embrace you, or did I only want to embrace you? But I always want to dream about you. It’s said one can’t help one’s dreams, whatever they are. But it was so lifelike that I wished that the beautiful, intoxicating dream wouldn’t stop. And afterwards during the day? One sobers up! Do remember me a little; and I’ll imagine your dreams for myself. My wife! See, how easily it comes! The dear Lord cares for us, and is good! What can’t be in any other way he gives at least as a dream.”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated July 17, 1924, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“We are alike in that we are really free in our feelings & we say what we feel – And that seems to be rare – I wonder why – Is it?”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), New York City, dated January 22, 1918, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“I’d want just a single answer, just one wish on earth, just a single desire, just a single

certainty: will we belong to each other completely?”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated May 5, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“I have become fairly calm again but for a few days last week I was in an awful state physically. I felt utterly disorientated, weary of life, miserable. I truly believed this could not go on. Then your letter arrived and everything was good, as if all my troubles were blown away.”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated October 28, 1941, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange

“I wonder what you are to me – it’s like father, mother, brother, sister, best man and woman friend, all mixed up in one – I love you greatly”

– Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1886), from a letter to Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), Canyon, Texas, dated December 14, 1917, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“I think of you as my wife, dear to me as you ever will be, and happy will be the home when you are given to my care and love.”

– Nathaniel Dawson (1829—1895), from a letter to Elodie Todd (1840—1877), Manassas Junction, dated August 1, 1861, in: “Practical Strangers. The Courtship Correspondence of Nathaniel Dawson and Elodie Todd, Sister of Mary Todd Lincoln”, edited by Stephen Berry and Angela Esco Elder

“ – My mind full of you & me. – Our togetherness. – Its beginning – its state now.”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), New York City, dated June 8, 1929, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“Each one of us carries within himself his necropolis.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated November 11, 1866, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“I no longer write to you to tell you the things that I constantly think about you since I’m well aware that they must leave you cold. But tributes to which you are little less indifferent I hasten to bring to your attanetion.”

– Marcel Proust (1871—1922), from a letter to Anna de Noailles (1876—1933), dated Saturday evening, March 12, 1904, in: “Selected Letters, Vol. 2: 1904—1909”, translated from the French by Terence Kilmartin

“I pray for you nightly”

– Carrie Hughes (1873—1938), from a letter to Langston Hughes (1902—1967), dated June 7, 1935, in: “My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes’s Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926—1938”

“You are as fine as the white night last night – Yes, your soul is that fine – The world is a hard place for fine souls – ”

“Your letter has deeply moved me. To the world I seem, by intention on my part, a dilettante and dandy merely – it is not wise to show one’s heart to the world – and as seriousness of manner is the disguise of the fool, folly in its exquisite modes of triviality and indifference and lack of care is the robe of the wise man. In so vulgar an age as this we all need masks.”

– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to Philip Houghton, dated? Late February, 1894, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters”

“Above all I love you the way you love me. It is noble, ancient, God-like. I bless you whenever I think of you.”

– Henry Miller (1891—1980), from a letter to Brenda Venus (born 1947), dated 1978, in: “Dear, Dear Brenda: The Love Letters of Henry Miller to Brenda Venus”

“I had a dream about you last night that when I woke up I couldn’t even believe it, that I could dream I was your wife what do you say to it. Such silly things where do we get them from?”

– Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), from a letter to Leos Janacek (1854—1928), dated July 25, 1924, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“You know, I can’t really describe the way I feel when I receive and read one of your letters. All the words I know are inadequate. I just feel that everything else is petty and unimportant. Nothing that anyone has done has ever affected me the way that you do.”

– Mike Royko (1932—1997), from a letter to Carol Joyce Duckman (1934—1979), postmarked April 28, 1954, in: “Royko in Love: Mike’s Letters to Carol” by Mike Royko and David Royko

“… Dear one, I do love you. It is such a real and stable thing, and all my memories of you are precious and always will be. As you said once, we make no vows but I do ask one thing of you – be absolutely frank in anything regarding you and me.”

– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), Melbourne Hospital, dated Sunday, October 21, 1917, 9.30 p.m., in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”

“I have been able to say to you many things with my pen, that I could never have uttered with my tongue.”

– Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821—1895), from a letter to John Miller (1819—1895), Colalto, dated January 25, 1855, in: “If You Love That Lady Don’t Marry Her: The Courtship Letters of Sally Mcdowell and John Miller, 1854—1856″

“If we were together, you’d feel how strong it is – you’re so sweet when you’re melancholy. I love your sad tenderness – when I’ve hurt you – That’s one of the reasons I could never be sorry for our quarrels – and they bothered you so – Those dear, dear little fusses, when I always tried so hard to make you kiss and forget.”

– Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896—1940), from a letter to Zelda Fitzgerald (1900—1948), Montgomery, Alabama, dated March, 1919, in: “Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda. The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald”

“I am waiting, I am waiting, I am waiting. Oh, one word from you would give life back to me! If you only knew how my soul is!”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), April 6, 1929, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“I am with you all day and all night, and at every instant, my poor dear friend. I am thinking of all the sorrow that you are in the midst of. I would like to be near you. The misfortune of being tied here distresses me. I would like a word so as to know if you have the courage that you need… I can only open a maternal heart to you which will replace nothing, but which is suffering with yours, and very keenly in each one of your troubles.”

– George Sand (1804—1876), from a letter to Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), Croissset, dated April 9, 1872, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“No matter how much I write I still can’t express to you, even remotely, how much I love you nor how anxious I am to be with you. You will just have to deduce it from the fact that I spend at least two hours a day writing. Quantity is not as good as quality – but I hope it is worth a little bit. If the length of my letters does as much as hint to you the love and desire that prompts it, then they have been well worth the effort. I love you.”

– Captain Hunnicutt, from a letter to Virginia Dickerson, dated July 3, 1944, in: “Dearest Virginia. Love Letters from a Cavalry Officer in the South Pacific”, edited by Gayle Hunnicutt

“And why do you fear me? Would I ever do anything to you? I’d surely never do anything bad. And what would I do to you? I know, I know! I long for it unutterably! Is that why you’re frightened?”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated May 2, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“You write with your heart’s blood, I with ink”

– Henry Miller (1891—1980), from a letter to Brenda Venus (born 1947), dated August 1, 1978, in: “Dear, Dear Brenda: The Love Letters of Henry Miller to Brenda Venus”

“You know you are an awful lot to me – I have to laugh when I say it – It sounds so funny to say it – As if you didn’t know – And still something makes me say it in such a raw way this morning”

“… and don’t think negative thoughts about me. I’m begging you”

– Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), from a letter to Doris Dana (1920—2006), dated November 8, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena

“I long for you more than for the sun; in fact I’d like a cloud in which we’d see only one another and not the others.”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated May 5, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček, translated by John Tyrrell

“Listen, tell me: should we not live together anymore?

Be brave. Write immediately.

I can’t stay here much longer.

Listen to your heart.

Now, tell me if I should come join you.

My life is yours.”

– Arthur Rimbaud (1854—1891), from a letter to his Paul Verlaine (1844—1896), dated July 4, 1873, in: “I Promise to be Good. The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud”, translated from the French by Watt Mason

“I wish you were in front of me – would hold me close just a minute before I go on to the things I must do – ”

– Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), from a letter to Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), Canyon, Texas, dated July 2, 1917, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“… now and again, when I re-read my letters, I am a little embarrassed because they talk of almost nothing of substance and I wonder what this serious man will think of me, the whole letter being such a lot of nonsense. Then I shake my head and laugh at myself.”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated Saturday, December 14, 1940, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange

“I am like a fly without a head; I don’t know where to turn, nor what to do; hours go by, while I’m sitting here at the desk, thinking of so many things… if anybody, in hiding, were here spying on me, he’d think I was doped.”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated February 28, 1930, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“And good-night, dear friend of my heart… Why aren’t you here? It is horrid not to live next door to those one loves.

– George Sand (1804—1876), from a letter to Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), Nohant, dated 1867, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“Do you know what I want – when I want? Darkness, light, transfiguration. The most remote headland of another’s soul – and my own. Words that one will never hear or speak. The improbable. The miraculous. A miracle.

You will get (for in the end you will surely get me) a strange, sad, dreaming, singing little monster struggling to escape from your hand.”

“Sometimes I could just undress you and lick you from head to toe. In my sleep I run my hands over the curves in your physique – what a thrill! Like being proficient in runs on the piano.”

– Henry Miller (1891—1980), from a letter to Brenda Venus (born 1947), dated October 7, 1976, in: “Dear, Dear Brenda: The Love Letters of Henry Miller to Brenda Venus”

“I write you, me beloved one, very often, and you write very little. You are wicked and naughty, very naughty, as much as you are fickle.”

– Napoleon Bonaparte (1769—1821), from a letter to Joséphine de Beauharnais (1763—1814), Verona, dated July 17, 1796 (pbs.org)

“I’m just blessed that I’ve confessed my love to you, that I’ve experienced confessing love to someone. This never happened before… And in life that mutual feeling has to fight its way through! Believe me, there’d be no need for life if it couldn’t bubble over with that intoxication. It’s the height of existence; it’s like a flower which waits for the bee to bring the pollen.

The flower must surely grieve when it finishes flowering in the cold, in the frost.”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated May 2, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“If I only could make you realise how very badly I miss you and how empty everything is for me without you. At times you feel that the difficulties of our movements and our existence weigh on me, and at times I do not do things easily or gracefully. But when you are not there I realise how much I love doing things for you and how nothing is really the matter as long as we share things.”

– Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), from a letter to Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), dated Monday October 3, 1933, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”

“I only wished to send you one more kiss before I went to sleep, to tell you that I love you… So, a kiss, a quick one, you know what kind, and one more, and oh again still more, and still more under your chin, in that spot I love on your very soft skin, and on your chest, where I place my heart.”

“When I am alone and have had no news from you for quite a while, then I get despondent.”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated December 24, 1941, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange

“ – Maybe it’s stupid to be in love. – To have a heart. All weakness. All meaningless. To live & be – without thought of other – maybe that’s the way.”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated July 5, 1929, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“I’ll send you, one of these days, a bunch of poems I composed during these lost evenings. They are written for you alone and not for other readers – not because there is anything bad, but because they are only for you.”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated April 8, 1929, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“This paper feels too little for me but I’m going to try to write to you anyway – I guess we often do things in spite of difficulties —.”

– Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1886), from a letter to Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), Charlottesville, Virginia, dated August 6, 1916, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“What do I get out of it when they’re always telling me that I appear young? They should rather ask for whom my heart aches and give me a cure. I’d drink it by the spoonful not only three times daily but all the time. You don’t understand this, and that’s good.”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated July 4, 1924, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“My love,

I’m writing this in bed. Yesterday, I couldn’t have managed it but just slept, with gargling as my sole distraction. I had a very sore throat and even some temperature… If I weren’t so uncomfortably positioned for writing, I’d spend pages telling you how happy I am and how much I love you. But I take comfort from the fact that you felt it clearly yourself, didn’t you, little man? Here are a hundred kisses, each carrying the same message.”

– Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986), from a letter to Jean-Paul Sartre (1905—1980), dated January 6, 1930, in: “Letters to Sartre”, translated from the French by Quintin Hoare

“That is all, my dear old friend, it is not my fault, I embrace you with all my heart. For the moment that is the only thing that is functioning. My brain is too stupefied.”

– George Sand (1804—1876), from a letter to Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), dated March 17, 1872, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“Do you think poetry was ever generally understood – or can be? Is the business of it to tell people what they know already, as they know it, and so precisely that they shall be able to cry out – “here you should supply this – that, you eventually pass over, and I will help you from my own stock?” It is all teaching, on the contrary, and the people hate to be taught…

A poet’s affair is with God, to whom he is accountable, and to whom is his reward: look elsewhere and you find misery enough.”

– Robert Browning (1812—1889), from a letter to John Ruskin (1819—1900), Paris, dated December 10, 1855, in: “The Life and Work of John Ruskin” by William Gershom Collingwood

“… do write, in the name of all that is holy, or I shall be lonesome. It’s as if I were in jail and my spirits are very low.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to his future wife, Olga Knipper (1868—1959), Yalta, dated October 30, 1899, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“Your photo, lit up by the midday sun, is smiling at me. I take your head in my hands and kiss you with deepest love and say farewell, keep well, stay confident, as I am.”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated November 3, 1941, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange

“We must have someone who is kind above all, and perfectly honest.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated March, 1872, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“This is how it is with me: I write exactly as if I were talking to you, without thinking about what I want to write, a letter like that is meant to replace a conversation or a cosy little chat.”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated December 31, 1940, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange

“This book must be possessed rather than read, as a man does not read a woman but possesses her.”

– Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), Leningrad, dated October 9, 1948, referring to the Pasternak’s novel “Doctor Zhivago”, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“God bless you. It is very lonesome without You. I embrace you firmly and gently, as I love you.”

– Grand Duchess Tatyana Nikolaevna (1897—1918), from a letter to her father, Nikolay Alexandrovich (Nikolay II, the last Emperor of all Russia, 1868—1918), dated December 2, 1914

“I think of you as my wife, dear to me as you ever will be, and happy will be the home when you are given to my care and love.”

“… and as ever I am turning to you when there is something special on my mind that I cannot quite deal with by myself.”

– Gretel Adorno (1902—1993), from a letter to Walter Benjamin (1892—1940), Berlin, dated January 18, 1937, in: “Gretel Adorno and Walter Benjamin. Correspondence 1930—1940″, translated from the German by Wieland Hoban

“She is very beautiful but looks much worse when, on special occasions, she goes to the hairdresser and comes back vulgarly crimped for two or three days, until the set wears off.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Moscow, dated July 1,1932, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“Whether you wish or not, I have already taken you there inside, where I place everything what I treasure, before I look at it, seeing it already inside.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Anatoly Shteiger, dated July 29, 1936, translated from the Russian by Natalija Arlauskaite, in: “Possession without a touch: letters of Marina Tsvetaeva”

“I was quiet and she could HEAR, she could understand what my silence meant.”

– Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), from a letter to Doris Dana (1920—2006), dated November 30, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena

“… my dear it is a long time now since I heard from you. There is no recent letter for me to set my foot upon as a stepping stone toward you.”

– Iris Murdoch (1919—1999), from a letter to Frank Thompson (1918—1889), dated July 29th, 1943, in: “Iris Murdoch, a Writer at War. Letters and Diaries, 1939—1945″

“I long so desperately for you, so that I would prefer to stay at home all the time like a hermit because nothing makes me happy at the moment and now I will be lucky if I get something from you this week. How long will this situation last?”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated July 18, 1941, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange

“Marina, my golden Friend, my marvelous, supernaturally fated destiny, my morning mist-on-the-rise soul, Marina.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), dated June 14, 1924, in: “No Love Without Poetry. The Memoirs of Marina Tsvetaeva’s Daughter”, by Ariadna Efron, edited and translated from the Russian by Diane Nemec Ignashev

“There will never be a chair in your life empty of me.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Abram Vishnyak (1895—1943), translated from the Russian by Natalija Arlauskaite, in: “Possession without a touch: letters of Marina Tsvetaeva”

“He is always in my heart. Ah, what one has truly loved, one can never leave.”

– Germaine de Staël (1766—1817), from a letter to Madame Juliette Recamier (1777—1849), Coppet, dated May 1, 1811, in: “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper

“My wish for you is that you should remain at heart just as I remember you many years ago… I am sure that yours will be a bright life after all your trials.”

– Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), from a letter to his brother Nikolay Bulgakov (1989—1966), Moscow, dated July 23, 1929, in: “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis

“When I have no letter, I feel you could be dead, and it is very sad. When I have a letter, I feel you are so living that I become very impatient; I want to see you. So, I have never peace, but why should I? Love is much better than peace.”

– Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986), from a letter to Nelson Algren (1909—1981), in: “A Transatlantic Love Affair. Letters to Nelson Algren” (https://archive.nytimes.com/)

“I am as weary as a ballerina after five acts and eight tableaux.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to his sister, Maria Chekhova (1863—1957), Moscow, dated January 14, 1891, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“What do I want from you? What I want from all of poetry and from each line of a poem: the truth of this moment. That’s as far as truth goes. Never turns to wood – always to ashes.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), St.-Gilles-sur-Vie, dated August 22, 1926, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“So are you black like a little devil? And should I fear you? Oh no, little soul, I don’t fear you. It’s true you have arms which are strong, but you also have arms which are soft, which embrace. I’d long for the latter; then you’d be defenceless; and what would I do with you? I’d forget all the world – for you’d be the most beautiful world of all. I’d pour out the deepest dark around us – until only our eyes would shine like stars. I wouldn’t want to see anything, only my mouth would kiss your body, my mouth would seek that greatest happiness and would find it. You know, I imagine now that you’re my wife, not a little in that word, as I imagine it: one soul, one body! My dear beloved! – you’re mine and I live in you. It’s impossible to change anything in this. We have our world in which the sun doesn’t set.”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated May 2, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“I do not understand why you call sadness and unhappiness a weakness. Does strength consist in being unable to feel sad?”

– Karolina Pavlova (1807—1893), from a letter to Boris Utin, dated June 30, 1854, in: “Essays on Karolina Pavlova”, edited by Alexander Lehrman and Susanne Fusso

“My tenderness, my happiness, what words can I write for you? How strange that although my life’s work is moving a pen over paper, I don’t know how to tell you how I love, how I desire you. Such agitation – and such divine peace: melting clouds immersed in sunshine – mounds of happiness.”

– Vladimir Nabokov (1899—1977), from a letter to Vera Nabokov (1902—1991), dated June 17, 1926, “Letters to Vera”, edited and translated from the Russian by Olga Voronina and Brian Boyd

“You are the only one in the world who could advise me about ‘me’”

– Kahlil Gibran (1883—1931), from a letter to Mary Elizabeth Haskell (1873—1964), dated August 28, 1924, in: “Beloved prophet; the love letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell and her private journal”

“I feel within myself such a turmoil of thoughts and feelings, that anybody – if he could experience it personally for just one moment – would feel himself being swept away into the whirling spiral of a storm and seized by such a fit of dizziness as to go insane from it or even die. I still succeed in resisting, and I keep steady. I’ll keep steady to the last. And if I should die – don’t be afraid – I’ll be able to die, as a person who knew how to suffer so much.”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated February 28, 1930, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“Afterwards, when I read your letter the second time, I understood everything, and was immediately sorry, deeply sorrowed as I read your expressions that were replete with sadness and melancholy, I didn’t expect such a letter. I thought the holidays would bring you a little joy. Tis was my wish that I have hoped for you and always will. I wanted you to be happy even if you missed me, that you would have the best memories possible of Christmas […] so that you would not suﬀer, but that’s not the way it was for you”

– Antonietta Petris, from a letter to her ﬁancé, Loris Palma, dated 6 January 1949, in: “Love in the time of migration. Lovers’ Correspondence between Italy and Canada, 1948—1957″ by Sonia Cancian

“How thrilled I always am when I catch sight of the disciplined tumult of your handwriting, those magnificent volutes as of an infinite and pulsating sea from the bosom of which your thought emerges sparkling like Aphrodite, as divine and as beautiful. But when, through some excess of kindness or refinement of graciousness as in your letter of this morning, it literally tortures me by arousing in me gratitude I feel I shall never be capable of expressing, then this joy is painful and mingles: ‘The foam of pleasure with tears of pain’”

– Marcel Proust (1871—1922), from a letter to Anna de Noailles (1876—1933), dated Friday evening, 8 January, 1904, in “Selected Letters, Vol. 2: 1904—1909”, translated from the French by Terence Kilmartin

“You old monkey, how dare you say you will kiss me without my permission as much as you like! I never heard of such impudence before! You better not try it, otherwise my revenge will be most terrible.”

– Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine at birth (the future last Empress of Russia, 1872—1918), from a letter to tsesarevich Nikolay Alexandrovich (the future last Emperor of all Russia, Nikolay II, 1868—1918), dated September 23, 1894

“My thoughts are with you all the time too now, especially when I can gather them together in the evening and at night.”

“In the thought that I have you, that you’re mine, lies all my joy of life. By it you give me the greatest happiness I’ve ever wished and which I never got and never really wanted from anyone before. I beam with pleasure, where possible I wish and do only good to others. Because you’re in me, because you’ve dominated me completely, I don’t long for anything else. I don’t have words to express my longing for you, to be close to you… it’s hard to calm myself. But the fire that you’ve set alight in me is necessary. Let it bum, let it flame, the desire of having you, of having you!”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated April 30, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“Men always find that the most serious thing of their existence is enjoyment.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated January, 1867, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“Your letter was delightful – red and yellow wine to me…”

– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas (1870—1945), Savoy Hotel, London, dated early March, 1893, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters” by Merlin Holland

“Darling extraordinary egocentric impossible… I do love you.”

– Iris Murdoch (1919—1999), from a letter to David Hicks (1929—1998), dated December 4, 1945, in: “Iris Murdoch, a Writer At War. Letters and Diaries, 1939—1945″

“Over the years of my literary work, I have become weary. I have some justification, but no consolation.”

– Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), from a letter to his friend Pavel Popov, Moscow, dated April 14—20, 1932, in: “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis

“Love lives on words and dies of deeds.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), St. Gilles, dated August 22, 1926, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer Maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“Every year it’s the same thing over and over again…”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858—1943), Melikhovo, dated November 26, 1895, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“I don’t understand why you’re not here sleeping next to me. I don’t know why you’re not with me.”

– Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), from a letter to Doris Dana (1920—2006), dated December 3, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena

“… do you understand why I am suffering so on your account, and what the nature of this suffering is? Even when a person is in love, he is capable of crossing the road and observing his agitation from a distance, but there is something between you and me that makes it impossible for me to leave you and look back.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Moscow, July, dated 23, 1910, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“Darling, I am thinking so much about you. Every time I wake in the night and every hour of the day. Sometimes I am very miserable to think of our being so parted, then comes your dear letter and comforts me.”

– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated February 26, 1935, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson.”

“My last words: stay alive, I don’t need anything else”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), in: “A Russian Psyche: The Poetic Mind Of Marina Tsvetaeva” by Alyssa W. Dinega

“The capacity for taking offense is a quality confined to elevated mind…”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Nikolay Chekhov (1858—1889), Moscow, dated March, 1886, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“Three days ago I was at a Christmas party for the insane, held in the violent ward. Too bad you weren’t there.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Alexander Chekhov (1855—1913), Yalta, dated December 30, 1893, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“… dear soul, let that which secretly binds us never pass away. God, let no-one dare tear it asunder. I’ll guard this secret so that no-one will find it out. After all I won’t harm anyone by loving you so unutterably…

With everyone else I’ve stood as if behind a fence; and when standing with you I want there to be not a hair’s breadth between us. You can have me whole, dear soul, and please give yourself whole to me in the same way.”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated April 30, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“You must know that you do not take me away from anywhere, that I am already taken away from every place in the world and from myself toward a single one, where I never arrive. (What cowardice to tell you this!)”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Abram Vishnyak (1895—1943), from “Florentine nights. Nine Letters With a Tenth Kept Back and an Eleventh Received”, in: “Readings: The Poetics of Blanchot, Joyce, Kafka, Kleist, Lispector, and Tsvetayeva” by H. Cixous, translated from the French by Verena A. Conley

“I will always be a friend of yours, you ought never to doubt that.”

– Germaine de Staël (1766—1817), from a letter to Benjamin Constant (1767—1830), London, dated January 23, 1814, in: “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper

“You and I never believed in our meeting here on earth, any more than we believed in life on this earth, isn’t that so?

I kiss you… on the lips? on the temple? on the forehead? Of course on the lips, for real, as if alive.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), the letter she wrote after he died, dated December 31, 1926-February 8, 1927, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer Maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“I’ve been carrying around a pile of letters I wrote to you. It’s a lot of writing, because except for my travel days I write to you every night. I shouldn’t load you down like that, but though I’m thinking about you the entire day, at night my memory of you becomes so intense that I can’t do anything else but write to you. It’s like a compulsion.”

– Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), from a letter to Doris Dana (1920—2006), dated December 5, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena

“Your letter, my dear, was received this morning, and I assure you the expressions of sympathy and love running through its pages but add to the deep love I bear you.”

“Treasure, my beloved, you only ever write very little about yourself now. I beg you, write to me about everything, don’t spare me, because I want to be your trusted friend.”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Prague, dated March 12, 1942, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevang

“I want only to have company and I want to have somewhere to go ‘home’ to; and where else but to you can I go ‘home’?”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated March 25, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“… My problem is that I have nothing external; all heart and fate.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Vera Merkurieva (1876—1943), dated August 31, 1940, in “A Captive Lion. The Life Of Marina Tsvetaeva”, by Elaine Feinstein

“Do you ever really miss me dearest one, or do you just think of me as a bit of the past?”

– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated June 18, 1934, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”

“Come back, come back, I cry and cry.

Tell me to come join you and I’ll come…

Where will you go?

What will you do?”

“Why is it that only my silence means something, and necessarily something bad? But it really doesn’t matter; it always has and always will be this way.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to his Aunt Asya, Moscow, dated January 14, 1936, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“I always like you to write just as you feel. Such letters are pleasant even in their sadness as they convince me of your love and confidence. I love to be sad at times. It is a pleasure to think of sad things. Never let the fear of affecting me control your feelings. I always wish them to be outspoken. I am always candid with you and tell you what I feel and think. Your letters are a comfort and a solace, even one line. If you saw me nightly kissing your miniature, you would know that I was in love. I think last at night and first in the morning of my God and you, my dear…”

“What is it to forget a human being? – It is to forget what one suffered through him.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Abram Vishnyak (1895—1943), dated 1922, in: “Florentine nights. Nine Letters With a Tenth Kept Back and an Eleventh Received”, quoted by H. Cixous, in “Readings: The Poetics of Blanchot, Joyce, Kafka, Kleist, Lispector, and Tsvetayeva”, translated from the French by Verena A. Conley

“… I am completely and irrevocably knocked off balance, because I am so tired that my mind and nerves are shattered. I am saying straight forward: I would prefer your society to anyone else’s, if I were at all capable of social intercourse. I can do two things: I can write, in order not to die of hunger, and I can play bridge, in order not to be left with my or others thoughts. …I’m like a victim of shell-shock. To sit in one place for more than an hour is real torture. I, you understand, have become incapable of conversing. If only I could quit the appalling profession of émigré writer, I would again become a human being. But I don’t know how to do anything. … The trouble is that I am flying upside down.”

– Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich (1886—1939), from a letter to his friend, Arkady Tumarkin, dated October 23, 1936, in: “Vladislav Khodasevich in the Emigration: Literature and the Search for Identity” by Pavel Uspenskij, in: The Russian Review. 2018. Vol. 77. No.1. Pp. 88—108.

“I think our life together will be like these last four days – and I do want to marry you – even if you do think I ‘dread’ it – I wish you hadn’t said that – I’m not afraid of anything. To be afraid a person has either to be a coward or very great and big. I am neither. Besides, I know you can take much better care of me than I can, and I’ll always be very, very happy with you – except sometimes when we engage in our weekly debates – and even then I rather enjoy myself. I like being very calm and masterful, while you become emotional and sulky. I don’t care whether you think so or not – I do.”

– Zelda Fitzgerald (1900—1948), from a letter to Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896—1940), Montgomery, Alabama, dated February, 1920, in: “Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda. The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald”

“But I cannot write further, I must tell you quickly that I love you, that I embrace you affectionately. Give me news of yourself… Enough, I can no more. I love you; don’t have black ideas, and resign yourself to being bored if the air is good there.”

– George Sand (1804—1876), from a letter to Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), Nohant, dated July 8, 1874, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“Somehow I feel that what is ailing me is that as you left that something which was between

us – something really holy – & which gave me strength – was not quite that for you anymore.”

“It is my best friendship ever; he is the cleverest, the most sociable, the most ancient, the most strange, and the most genius of all people in this world.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Lyudmila Chirikova (1895—1995), dated April 4, 1923, referring to Prince Sergey Volkonsky (1860—1937), in “Writing as Performance: The case of Marina Tsvetaeva” by Dr. Alexandra Smith

“I don’t need anything anymore when I work: I need only you. If I receive a letter from you today, I will immediately be well. I believe that, even if I should die, if a letter arrived, I would rise from the dead. I am so alone, so alone and you cannot imagine the kind of evenings I spend. As soon as it gets dark, anguish overcomes me …. Write to me! Answer somehow to all the love I have for you…”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated October 11, 1931, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“I miss you as much as ever, but you seem horribly far away and I cannot imagine you getting back or at any rate not the same person.”

– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated July, 1934, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson.”

“Beloved, come to me often in my dreams. No, not that. Live in my dreams. Now you have a right to wish and to fulfill your wishes”

“Yes, you must be cold.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Alexei Suvorin (1834—1912), dated March, 19, 1892, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“I feel certain that you have already detached yourself from me with your mind and with your heart – and I have become just like anybody else, from whom you are far away and to whom from time to time you give an indifferent thought – then everything dies inside me. I feel my soul and my breath falling apart; every light goes out in my brain, and my hand falls on the paper, motionless as a stone. Help me, help me.”

“Please write if anything interesting occurs. I am lonesome here, really, and if it were not for letters I might even hang myself, learn to drink the poor Crimean wine or marry an ugly and stupid woman.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Grigori Rossolimo (1860—1928), Yalta, dated October 11, 1899, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“Another gray & threatening morning. – I’m downstairs. It’s seven. – The sleeping potion gave me sleep. – Till six. And then I lay in your bed wondering will a letter come. And what will it bring me. Peace or torture?”

“At last I have a moment of quiet and I can write to you. But I have so many things to chat with you about, that I hardly know where to begin…”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated Sunday, January, 1872, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“I am crying, Rainer, you are streaming from my eyes!”

“I wish you were inspired to write to me more often, because the need I always have of your letters, as of air to breathe, at this moment is greater than ever…”

“I would like to have a talk with you. I am utterly lonely.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Alexei Suvorin (1834—1912), Melikhovo, dated August 1, 1892, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“… we love each other on credit and guess more than we know.”

– Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), St. Petersburg, dated July 12, 1910, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“What a foolish life I have been leading for two and a half months! How is it that I have not croaked with it? My longest nights have not been over five hours. What running about! What letters! and what anger! – repressed – unfortunately! At last, for three days I have slept all I wanted to, and I am stupefied by it.”

“Sometimes I think that the artistic life is a long and lovely suicide, and am not sorry that it is so.”

– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to H. C. Marillier, dated December 12, 1885, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters”

“You’ve been sparing with words. What’s the matter with you again?”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated March 27, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“For the love of God, please write! It’s all I have left…”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated February 27, 1930, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“She was very kind to me, she was…”

– John Miller (1819—1895), from a letter to Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821—1895), Philadelphia, dated October 24, 1854, in: “If You Love That Lady Don’t Marry Her: The Courtship Letters of Sally Mcdowell and John Miller, 1854—1856″

“Sweetheart, please dont worry about me – I want to always be a help – You know I am all yours and love you with all my heart.”

– Zelda Fitzgerald (1900—1948), from a letter to Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896—1940), Montgomery, Alabama, dated February 1919, in: “Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda. The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald”

“I do not live in my lips, and he who kisses me misses me.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), dated August, 22, 1926, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer Maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“Your letters are like the visits of angels and are refreshing vessels in the dreary path of life. And I know, as you love me, you will continue to lighten my life with them. I will not ask you to write me daily but hope you will twice or three times a week…”

– Nathaniel Dawson (1829—1895), from a letter to Elodie Todd (1840—1877), dated May 30, 1861, in: “Practical Strangers. The Courtship Correspondence of Nathaniel Dawson and Elodie Todd, Sister of Mary Todd Lincoln”, edited by Stephen Berry and Angela Esco Elder

“… my ‘acute crisis’ has passed and again I want to see you all, talk to you, visit with you.”

“ALL MY LIFE I have been bawled out, balled up, held up, held down, bull-dozed, black-jacked, walked on, cheated, squeezed and mooched; stuck up for war tax, dog tax, cigarette and gas tax, Liberty Bonds, baby bond and matrimony, Red Cross, green cross and double cross, asked to join the G. A. R., Women’s Relief Corps, Men’s relief and stomach relief; I have worked like Hell, soles on my shoes nearly gone, I have been drunk, gotten others drunk, lost all I had and part of my furniture and because I won’t spend or lend all of the little I earn and go beg, borrow or steal, I have been cussed and discussed, hung up, robbed and damn near ruined and in spite of it all, instead of being cut and scraped, butchered and carved by cheap razor blades, the only reason I am happy today is because I use Double-edge – ”

– Carrie Hughes (1873—1938), from a letter to Langston Hughes (1902—1967), Saturday, February 16, 1935, in: “My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes’s Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926—1938”

“Do you sometimes think of me? And do you think of what will happen to me, to us? Me does not mean anything else …. Will you write to me? Will you tell me everything? Do you want me not to write again?”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated March 22, 1929, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“I woke last night at 12.30 and heard a taxi drive up and my first thought was that you had come home, exceptionally early…”

– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated May 30 and 31, 1934, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson.”

“… existence is only tolerable when one forgets one’s miserable self.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“It’s 10:30 A.M. – Raining. I came in at 9:45 just as the letter carrier handed the doorman two letters of yours for me! – There were none yesterday. – So the two today. And I have read them – My Sweetestheart in her element – Faraway still right here. It’s all quite unbelievable for you as for me. You have the mountain – I just feel space – & space beyond space – Mountains seem timeless – creative of moods not withstanding – Space is everything – yet nothing – still tangible – to me – Maybe another form of the mountain. – Another form of all that was & will be. – ”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), New York City, dated May 9, 1929, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“We are so far from one another in the field of our interests and activity – but that’s the very reason why I like listening to you.”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated December 2, 1918, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“Write me if possible more often …. I can’t be in very good spirits now, but your letters do tear me away from worries… and carry me briefly into another world.”

“When I wake up each morning it makes me sad to think I’m going to spend another long day without you.”

– Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986), from a letter to Jean-Paul Sartre (1905—1980), September 17, 1937, in: “Letters to Sartre”, translated from the French by Quintin Hoare

“Memories – they’re like a faded flower. And I’d like to smash them to pieces, at least they wouldn’t hurt any more.”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated August 15, 1926, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“Some day you will find, even as I have found, that there is no such thing as a romantic experience; there are romantic memories, and there is the desire of romance – that is all. Our most fiery moments of ecstasy are merely shadows of what somewhere else we have felt, or of what we long some day to feel. So at least it seems to me. And, strangely enough, what comes of all this is a curious mixture of ardour and of indifference. I myself would sacrifice everything for a new experience, and I know there is no such thing as a new experience at all. I think I would more readily die for what I do not believe in than for what I hold to be true. I would go to the stake for a sensation and be a sceptic to the last!”

– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to H. C. Marillier, dated December 12, 1885, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters” by Merlin Holland

“Kiss me, Lover – one darling kiss – I need you so – ”

– Zelda Fitzgerald (1900—1948), from a letter to Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896—1940), Montgomery, Alabama, dated April, 1919, in: “Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda. The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald”

“My realities may be different from what most people call reality, but still they are realities.”

– Etty Hillesum (1914—1943), from a letter to Osias Kormann, dated 1943, from a Westerbork transitional camp for Jews, in: “An Interrupted Life: Diaries and Letters 1941—43. And Letters from Westerbork″

“My dear Darling,

I don’t know what to call you. I am tired of Madam; & “my dear Friend” would sound very sweetly in some cases, but very unmeaningly toward you. Do tell me what I shall say; or else encourage a poor suffering lover, who has brought away from all his visits to you new arrows of uneasiness & distress, to call you what he pleases, as it is only one more way of candidly telling you the truth.”

– John Miller (1819—1895), from a letter to Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821—1895), Philadelphia, dated January 20, 1855, in: “If You Love That Lady Don’t Marry Her: The Courtship Letters of Sally Mcdowell and John Miller, 1854—1856″

“You’re in my blood. I can’t do anything without you because you live inside me.”

– Doris Dana (1920—2006), from a letter to Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), dated April 22, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena

“I do not write to you and you do not write to me, and time is passing. And rather swiftly. But it is not in my power to change anything.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), in a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Moscow, dated April 3, 1935, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“I have wanted for several days to write you a long letter in which I should tell you all that I have felt for a month. It is funny. I have passed through different and strange states. But I have neither the time nor the repose of mind to gather myself together enough.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated October, 1869, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“I thought about how much I would want for us to die together… With one condition: to be in the same coffin. Of course, you would have to approve of giving up silence forever… I would have so much to say to you, so many things…”

– Emil Cioran (1911—1995), from a letter to Friedgard Thoma, quoted in her autobiography “Um nichts in der Welt”, translated from the Romanian translation by Christina Tudor-Sideri

You will get, Boris (for in the end you will surely get me), a strange, sad, dreaming, singing little monster struggling to escape from your hand.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), dated July 26, 1926, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer Maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“Dearest I think of you all the time and wish to share all my impressions and moods with you.”

– Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), from a letter to Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), in flight on Imperial Airways. Flying boat “Scipio’. Between Brindisi and Athens, dated May 25, 1934, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”.

“God knows, I would not have hesitated for a moment to precede or follow you into the fires of hell, if you had given the word. For my heart is not mine but yours.”

“So, Rainer, it’s over. I don’t want to go to you. I don’t wish to want to.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), dated June 3, 1926, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“How I love you… How pliant you are, like a stem; lips parting, speaking malicious and destructive words. I, a pliant fatality, isn’t that so? Dear hands, hands from which to drink love. You are entirely like that, something from which to drink love. And I drink, having forgotten everything.”

– Nikolay Punin (1888—1953), from a letter to Anna Akhmatova (1889—1966), dated October 19, 1922 and the diary note of November 2, 1922, in: “The Unsung Hero of the Russian Avant-Garde: The Life and Times of Nikolay Punin” by Natalia Murray

“You’re sweet – I’d like to kiss you wherever you’d like to be kissed most – just now – That’s probably not at all – or all over. – ”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated September 14, 1926, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“Now it is over. It doesn’t take me long to be done with wanting.”

“My friend – my friend, I am not well – a deadly weight of sorrow lies heavily on my heart. I am again tossed on the troubled billows of life; and obliged to cope with difficulties, without being buoyed up by the hopes that alone render them bearable. ‘How flat, dull, and unprofitable,’ appears to me all the bustle into which I see people here so eagerly enter! I long every night to go to bed, to hide my melancholy face in my pillow; but there is a canker-worm in my bosom that never sleeps.”

– Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 -1797), from a letter to Gilbert Imlay (1754 -1828), Gothenburg, dated June 29, 1795, in: “The Love Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay”

“The fate of our letters is an odd one: we write but don’t send them off.”

“My love, I don’t know how to answer your questions about where we could go. What I want most is your happiness!”

– Doris Dana (1920—2006), from a letter to Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), dated April 22, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena

“I don’t know where to begin – so I’ll begin where I shall end – with my love for you…”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to her husband, Sergey Efron (1893—1941), she had heard nothing since the Summer of 1919, dated July, 1921, in: “Marina Tsvetaeva. A Life In Poems” by Rolf Gross

“What can I tell you? Where shall I begin? There is so much I need to say, but I’ve got out of the habit of talking, let alone writing.”

– Sergey Efron (1893—1941), from a letter to his wife, Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), she had heard nothing since the Summer of 1919, dated July 1, 1921, in: “Marina Tsvetaeva. A Life In Poems” by Rolf Gross

“What? Life and death? An anxiety worse than either. And which, I confess, prevents me from savouring beauty at the moment. How to find enjoyment in the world, when one sees it in a wounded flight, like on a fine morning, when one starts to realize that one has been deceived, that the being whom one loves is going to die. All that is too sorrowful and I want to divert myself with your books if the open wound from the divine arrow is curable.”

– Marcel Proust (1871—1922), from a letter to Anna de Noailles (1876—1933), dated 1905, Night of Saturday to Sunday (http://theesotericcuriosa.blogspot.com/)

“[…] I want to sleep with you, fall asleep and sleep. That magnificent folk word, how deep, how true, how unequivocal, how exactly what it says. Just – sleep. And nothing more. No, one more thing: my head buried in your left shoulder, my arm around your right one – and that’s all. No, another thing: and know right into the deepest sleep that it is you. And more: how your heart sounds. And – kiss your heart.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), dated 1926, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer Maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“I am living – sleeping and working – in your room as it seems to keep me more in touch with you darling.”

– Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), from a letter to Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), dated October 13, 1933, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”

“love is… a reddish little spark in the sombre and mute ocean of Eternity, it is the only moment that belongs to us…”

– Ivan Turgenev (1818—1883), from a letter to Pauline Viardot-Garcia (1821—1910), dated 1848, in: “One Less Hope: Esdsays on Twenntieth- Century Russian Poets” by Constantin V. Ponomareff

“I thank you with all my heart for your letter and press your hand cordially …. Write when you are in the mood. I will answer with the very greatest pleasure.”

“your letters make me more and more ‘delirious’ – I think that’s the word for it. What erogenous zones I have left are quivering with hopeless anticipation.”

– Henry Miller (1891—1980), from a letter to Brenda Venus (born 1947), dated September 29, 1980, in: “Dear, Dear Brenda: The Love Letters of Henry Miller to Brenda Venus”

“I am dreadfully sad. I would like to withdraw from the world; I have only sorrowful impressions of it. I would like to collect all regrets and all good-byes. Seeing you again would suffice for me to recover. Rest assured then that my last rays will still be for you.”

– Germaine de Staël (1766—1817), from a letter to Voght, Geneva, Coppet, dated January 27, 1809, in: “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper

“It’s as quiet as the grave here again.”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated December 2, 1918, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“I’ve wanted to write you for a long time and who knows what impatience stops me in the middle of letters, what exasperation at my poverty of language. In the end, I’m sending you a few lines so you know that I’m here, that I’m alive, and that if I don’t write it’s because I can’t.

My life here is up and down, it’s the usual flow, hope and hopelessness. Desires to die and to live. Sometimes there’s order, other times the chaos devours me. I think right now it’s the latter. Perhaps that’s why I’m writing you.”

– Alejandra Pizarnik (1936—1972), from a letter to her psychoanalyst, León Ostrov, dated December 27, 1960, in: “Three letters from Alejandra Pizarnik to León Ostrov” by Emily Cooke (https://www.musicandliterature.org/)

“You write that you find everything bewildering, in confusion… It is good for things to be confused, very good! It indicates that you are a philosopher, a smart woman.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to his future wife, Olga Knipper (1868—1959), Yalta, dated September 8, 1900, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“It’s not consolation that I seek, however, it’s seeing him, and in dreams I tend to have him, and in sensations of his being present in

wakefulness as well, and I go on living from what I receive from both things, and from nothing more than this.”

– Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), from a letter to Victoria Ocampo (1890—1979), Rio De Janeiro, Brasil, dated 26 October, 1943, in: “This America Of Ours. The Letters of Gabriela Mistral and Victoria Ocampo”, translated by Elizabeth Horan and Doris Meyer

“When you sit in your study reading a book – think of me. I have been deprived of that happiness for two and a half months now.”

– Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), from a letter to his friend Pavel Popov, from the sanatorium at Barvikha to Moscow, dated December 1, 1939, in: “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis

“‘I would like, oh, I really would like, to be able to swim away in my tears’.”

– Etty Hillesum (1914—1943), probably in a letter to Father Han and friends, from a Westerbork transit camp for Jews, quoiting some woman’s words at the camp, dated August 24, 1943, in: “An Interrupted Life: Diaries and Letters 1941—43. And Letters from Westerbork”, translated from the Dutch by Arnold J. Pomerans

“I would not quit you for all the women in the world. You are the soul of my life, my very existence, and it is all because you love me and have warmed it to life, the bruised and broken ruins of my bosom.”

– Nathaniel Dawson (1829—1895), from a letter to Elodie Todd (1840—1877), Camp Davis, Lynchburg, dated May 11, 1861, in: “Practical Strangers. The Courtship Correspondence of Nathaniel Dawson and Elodie Todd, Sister of Mary Todd Lincoln”, edited by Stephen Berry and Angela Esco Elder

“I love you… I need you. You can help me more than anyone on earth.

Forgive me for the things I do not know, the things I can not fight alone, the things I haven’t understood. You know better than anyone else how stupid and unwise I am, how I must battle the darkness within my self. No one else would help me. No one else would care as you care. No one else would even try to understand. The door is never closed between us… Only the ugly shadow of my self stands in the way now.”

– Langston Hughes (1902—1967), from a letter to Charlotte Mason, in: “The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902—1941, I, Too, Sing, America”, by Arnold Rampersad

“… you are punishing me with your silence, or even by wrenching me out of your heart because of my egoism, because my feelings are only ‘words, words, words,’ ‘literature’; if they were real, I would have proven my love in deeds and not in sighs recorded on paper.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Moscow, dated June 29, 1948, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“Nothing in the world could give me a greater thrill than to take you (roundabout expression) or even just feel your secret parts… each letter, each photo, only increases appetites. You can appreciate that, can’t you?”

– Henry Miller (1891—1980), from a letter to Brenda Venus (born 1947), dated July 15, 1976, in: “Dear, Dear Brenda: The Love Letters of Henry Miller to Brenda Venus”

“A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it. That is all that is to be said about our relations to flowers. Of course man may sell the flower, and so make it useful to him, but this has nothing to do with the flower. It is not part of its essence. It is accidental. It is a misuse.”

– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to Bernulf Clegg, dated 1891, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters” by Merlin Holland

“… no sort of literature can surpass real life in its cynicism; you cannot intoxicate with one glassful a person who has already drunk his way through a whole barrel.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Maria Kiseleva, Moscow, dated January 14, 1887, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“The wind is careless – uncertain – I like the wind – it seems more like me than anything else – I like the way it blows things around – roughly – even meanly – then the next minute seems to love everything – some days is amazingly quiet.”

– Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1886), from a letter to Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), Canyon, Texas, October 1, 1917, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“How such love and warmth do us good and how sad that they don’t go on to set people on fire the way hate and other bad characteristics do! How strange that weeds are more fertile than good plants.”

– Mining (a sister), from a letter to Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889—1951), Vienna XVII. Neuwaldeggerstrasse 38, dated August 6, 1919, in: “Wittgensten’s Family letters. Corresponding with Ludwig”, translated by Peter Winslow

“How terrible is this, our first encounter; I dreaded it. Perhaps for that reason I did not come…”

– Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), Leningrad, dated October 11, 1946, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“How can I explain to you, my happiness, my golden, wonderful happiness, how much I am all yours – with all my memories, poems, outbursts, inner whirlwinds? Or explain that I cannot write a word without hearing how you will pronounce it – and can’t recall a single trifle I’ve lived through without regret – so sharp! – that we haven’t lived through it together – whether it’s the most, the most personal, intransmissible – or only some sunset or other at the bend of a road – you see what I mean, my happiness?”

– Vladimir Nabokov (1899—1977), from a letter to Vera Nabokov (1902—1991), Berlin, dated November 8, 1923, in: “Letters to Vera”, edited and translated from the Russian by Olga Voronina and Brian Boyd

“I wish you were here – or I were there – or something – I don’t know what – ”

– Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1886), from a letter to Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), Canyon, Texas, dated October 1, 1917, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“…You do not sound very exhilarated with life, my poor Bronio…. Don’t think I don’t know how much my being ill weighs upon you. I wish sometimes you could [word missing: realise?] how much difference to me your way of taking it makes – I mean the knowledge that I am not having to bear something all alone, in a darkness of misunderstanding and indifference, as I know many people do. And yet I am always [word missing: happy?] when I think you can forget it for a minute and feel care-free if only for a little while…”

– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), Oyenhausen, dated June 2, 1933, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson.”

“To be loved is something of which I have not mastered the art.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (Russian, 1892—1941), from a letter to Alexander Bakhrah (1902—1985), dated 1924, in: “Marina Tsvetaeva” by Elaine Feinstein (Cardinal Points Magazine #12, Volume 1, 2010)

“Do you know what it is to succumb under an insurmountable day-mare, – ‘a whoreson lethargy,’ Falstaff calls it, – an indisposition to do anything, or to be anything, – a total deadness and distaste, – a suspension of vitality, – an indifference to locality, – a numb, soporifical, good-for-nothingness, – an ossification all over, – an oyster-like insensibility to the passing events, – a mind-stupor, – a brawny defiance to the needles of a thrusting-in conscience.”

– Charles Lamb (1775—1834), from a letter to Bernard Barton (1784—1849), dated January 9, 1824, in: “The Works Of Charles Lamb: The letters If Charles Lamb, With A Sketch Of His Life. The Poetical Works”

“I received your letter and sensed, not so much from your words as from the letter itself, how seriously unwell you are, and how troubled

your spirits are.”

– Vikenty Veresayev (1867—1945), from a letter to Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), Moscow, dated August 12, 1931, in: “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis

“How I would love to see you again in that room where you have in front of your window, a garden, a town, a whole immense and minute landscape held in the glass; perspective with its infinite contraction of scale is the most ingenious art of the Japanese gardeners.”

– Marcel Proust (1871—1922), from a letter to Anna de Noailles (1876—1933), dated 1912 (http://theesotericcuriosa.blogspot.com/)

“… there are moments in which silence acts as a poison – and as it has been forced upon me, at least as far as my voice would reach, you too will now be confronted with it, and will not wish to withdraw from it.”

– Walter Benjamin (1892—1940), from a letter to Gretel Adorno (1902—1993), Paris, dated February 10, 1935, in: “Gretel Adorno and Walter Benjamin. Correspondence 1930—1940″, translated from the German by Wieland Hoban

“I want to tell you, my love, that I am so utterly and completely happy with you. I am no longer capable of answering your sweet letters adequately, I lack the words but in my mind I turn the words into actions, I take you in my arms and say to you that I love you dearly and passionately and that I long immeasurably for you. God protect you, keep well and cheerful and happy.”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated September 19, 1941, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange

“I want to write you and I have nothing in particular to say but I want to write anyway”

“So, love, do not be too unhappy with me when I am tired out; it will certainly be better when you are here…”

– Elisabeth Heisenberg (1914—1998), from a letter to Werner Heisenberg (1901—1976), Urfeld, dated May 26, 1946, in: “My Dear Li. Werner and Elisabeth Heisenberg. Correspondence 1937—1946″, translated from the German by Irene Heisenberg

“Sweetheart – I miss you so – I love you so – and next time I’m going back with you – I’m absolutely nothing without you – Just the doll that I should have been born. You’re a necessity and a luxury and a darling, precious lover – ”

“I miss you very much. Life is terribly empty not to say dull. I wonder how much I still really matter to you….”

– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated May 10, 1932, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson.”

“My whole being seething into desire to be embraced to sleep – by anyone that has soft skin – & gentle arms.”

– Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1886), from a letter to Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), New York City, October 10, 1917, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“You have made me so rich, oh God, please let me share out Your beauty with open hands. My life has become an uninterrupted dialogue with You, oh God, one great dialogue.”

– Etty Hillesum (1914—1943), from a letter to Tide, from a Westerbork transit camp for Jews, dated August 18, 1943, in: “An Interrupted Life: Diaries and Letters 1941—43. And Letters from Westerbork”, translated from the Dutch by Arnold J. Pomerans

“I am wondering a great deal about how it came about that I love you so passionately and have such a burning desire to give so much love. In my whole life I was rarely asked whether I wanted to give as much as to receive. It is quite different with you. You are an absolute master, you know how to reach my weakest points and that is why you will get further. I feel as if there was some unopened reservoir there which you discovered and which belongs only to you. You have enticed another secret out of me, you bad one, but enough for now! I kiss your beloved eyes, your cheeks, your forehead and then five times your mouth, hug you warmly and lovingly…”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, September 13, 1941, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange

“I wanted to set out everything that’s been happening to me in a detailed letter, but my exhaustion and sense of hopelessness are too great. I can’t write anything.”

– Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), from a letter to Aleksey Gorky, Moscow, dated September 3, 1929, in: “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis

“Ah! Come, come, and you will be received with all the affection which infatuation and esteem

can combine.”

– Germaine de Staël (1766 -1817), from a letter to Don Pedro de Souza, Florence, dated May 14, 1805, in: “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper

“I work with absolute lack of focus. But that, apparently, is the reason for my success. I think about the most distant things while my hands and something – who knows what – merges with the task before me. I’m far away, and nevertheless the work gets done.”

“My heart will leap up every time I receive a letter from you, but the expectation and the knowledge that you have written in your own good time will increase my pleasure.”

– Giacomo Leopardi (1798—1837), from a letter to Pietro Giordani (1774—1848), Recanati, dated March 21, 1817, in: “The Letters of Giacomo Leopardi 1817—1837″. Selected and translatedfrom the Italian by Prue Shaw

“… Dearest, dearest – my own sweetheart! What can I do for you, here, from the distance? Believe me, it is torture to be separated from you, and a poisonous feeling all the time…”

– Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), from a letter to Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), dated January 16, 1929, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”

“I am sorry about what appears to you in effect as my bitch-like behaviour. I don’t know what to say. You know I am deeply attached to you, and that attachment has survived shocks, misadventures and time. I think it is pretty strong and solid, and its continuance means a lot to me.”

– Iris Murdoch (1919—1999), from a letter to Brigid Brophy (1929—1995), dated March 18, 1960, in: “Living on Paper: Letters of Iris Murdoch, 1934—1995”

“Why can’t we live together, why is life always so badly arranged?”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated April 23, 1873, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“And now, good night, my sweet boy. I am falling asleep beside you. 1000 loving kisses…”

“Listen, my happiness – you won’t say again that I’m torturing you?”

– Vladimir Nabokov (1899—1977), from a letter to Vera Nabokov (1902—1991), Prague, dated November 8, 1923, in: “Letters to Vera”, edited and translated from the Russian by Olga Voronina and Brian Boyd

“ – I have written you at least forty letters during the last two weeks – all forty going into the fire. They seemed like so much nothing…”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated July 1, 1929, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“We used to walk together, people envied us – and yet you only talked about your family happiness – and I about my unhappiness.”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated July 24, 1917, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“It is late again. I am going to go to sleep and dream most beautifully of you. I kiss you lovingly, good night, be healthy and happy.”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated September 13, 1941, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange

“Between me and life there is a mist of words always.”

– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to Arthur Conan Doyle (1859—1930), dated? April 1891, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters” by Merlin Holland

“My day is gone into twilight, and I don’t think it worth the expense of candles.”

“You make me soft (humanize, feminize, animalize) like fur.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Abram Vishnyak (1895—1943), in: “Nine Letters with a Tenth Kept Back and an Eleventh Received”, quoted in: “Readings: The Poetics of Blanchot, Joyce, Kafka, Kleist, Lispector, and Tsvetayeva” by H. Cixous

“The one thought that pains me is that it seems we shall never in our lives have the opportunity to see each other again. My fate has been tangled and fearsome. Now it is leading me towards silence, and for a writer that is tantamount to death.”

– Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), from a letter to his brother, Nikolay Bulgakov (1989—1966), Moscow, dated February 21, 1930, in: “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis

“Darling I do so love being near you, even when we are so sad as we were both today.”

– Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), from a letter to Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), dated January 12, 1929, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”

“I have some new friends who are very dear to me, but the past seems designed, above all, to disturb the imagination and the heart. The present, which one would lament even more bitterly than the past, cannot erase the trace of it. I leave this almost metaphysical reflection to you, you who are such a fine observer of the soul’s interior and who have eyes which see better within than without…”

– Germaine de Staël (1766—1817), from a letter to Gerando, Coppet, dated October 8, 1800, in: “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper

“… it is high time to beautify myself, not that I have any pretensions at pleasing and seducing by my physical graces, but I hate myself too much when I look in my mirror. The older one grows, the more care one should take of oneself.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated April 23, 1873, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“My darling, my sweetheart, when I am away from you in such an apparently unnecessary manner, I love you so much, am so dreadfully homesick for you. I also have the feeling I should be near you, so as to avert any dangers and help you in your discomforts. Dearest if I could spend the rest of my life as your personal servant and nurse I would be happy!”

– Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), from a letter to Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), dated December 26, 1928, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”

“My sweet, I too have no patience for anything, wherever I am I long to be at home so that I can be alone with you, writing to you and reading one of your letters. It is always the same and will be so until we are together.”

“… your letters are always rich to the taste. A charming one has just arrived this morning, & pulled me out of a morass of gloom in which I was floundering.”

– Iris Murdoch (1919—1999), from a letter to Frank Thompson (1918—1889), dated October 22, 1943, in: “Iris Murdoch, a Writer At War. Letters and Diaries, 1939—1945″

“… my dear Darling, how could you leave me so long without a letter? I told you how sad I was. Now this doesn’t mean ‘despondent’ for I am really hopeful to the extent of obstinacy in all matters that interest me enough to be matters of despondency. But I am melancholy. That is the habit of my temper. And the kind soothings that you would be willing to bestow come to me in no shape more pleasantly than even the briefest letter. Wont you after this reaches you, write me so often that it will relax all my impatience for you can have no idea how I have really suffered since the first day that I felt sure that a letter would arrive.”

– John Miller (1819—1895), from a letter to Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821—1895), Philadelphia, dated February 16, 1855, in: “If You Love That Lady Don’t Marry Her: The Courtship Letters of Sally Mcdowell and John Miller, 1854—1856″

“Every line of yours will be an equal source of joy to me in the new year too, and I will not object to any brevity.”

– Gretel Adorno (1902—1993), from a letter to Walter Benjamin (1892—1940), Berlin, dated January 12, 1937, in: “Gretel Adorno and Walter Benjamin. Correspondence 1930—1940″, translated from the German by Wieland Hoban

“I wish you were here – talking would be so much fun – When you feel soaked and soaked with all sorts of things it’s pretty hard to get any of it onto paper – ”

– Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1886), from a letter to Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), Loveland, Colorado, dated September 4, 1917, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“Beloved, it has turned 12 o’clock midnight while I’ve been talking with you, so good night!!! I am imagining you are with me, I am going to fall asleep in your arms. Be healthy and happy and write a lot to me as soon as you can. With great longing I kiss your eyes, cheeks, mouth…”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated Saturday evening, August 8, 1941, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange

“The autumn brings melancholy.”

– Iris Murdoch (1919—1999), from a letter to Frank Thompson (1918—1889), dated August 15, 1943, in: “Iris Murdoch, a Writer At War. Letters and Diaries, 1939—1945″

“Altho’ I wrote you this morning that I would not write any more today here I am at it again. – The walk to the post office – no letter from you for a change – & caught in a downpour – stirred me up a bit. – I hope no letter means nothing. – I’m in such a state of tension that all sorts of miserable thoughts shoot through my head & I dare not let any of them take hold of me.”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated June 25, 1929, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“Farewell, I will write to you again tomorrow. Now I am sitting down in my favourite place and then a kiss and another and then?”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated September 25, 1941, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange

“My friend, my angel.

So often you say that it can’t finish with something good and the end would be a rescue. I confessed you long time ago:

If you will be ever so unwell that violent end will become for you the only way we’ll do it together, and I’ll be the first of us – before your eyes. I don’t believe in these escapes and deny whole their nature. But I would be completely another case. I will accept it, my favorite little dolly, as part of your fate, from which I cannot be separated. And after doing that, you may and you have to stay, because then me become you, and you will want with it among the people

lightly and pleasant. And any new of your lives, which will replace the memory, will not be a betrayal, but joyful transformation of your fidelity. And what a exultation, when I’ll take you across faith in suicide immediately into that true, in the eyes of which suicide shows up as idolatry. Let me be in the union with you.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter (“note”) to his future second wife, Zinaida Neigauz (1897—1966), dated January 27, 1931, in: “Suicide and Love” in Boris Pasternak’s Ideology: The New Discovered Letter” by Konstantin Polivanov

“I am feeling such a dreadful longing for you, dearest, just to be near you and to hear your voice and see your lovely dear face…

I love and love you and think of you all the time so tenderly and with so much real passion…”

– Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), from a letter to Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), Milan station, dated April 30, 1928, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”

“I’m going to stay here another week. And you’ll come, right? Be honest. You’re being brave. I hope you mean it. Trust me, I will be on my best behavior.

I’m yours. I’m waiting.”

– Arthur Rimbaud (1854—1891), from a letter to his Paul Verlaine (1844—1896), dated July 7, 1873, in: “I Promise to be Good. The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud”, translated from the French by Watt Mason

“… you won’t rest easy, not until you save the soul from which you may hang and depend. Even if it only means saving him from himself, and with more reason if he has no enemies except for those within himself. Why should you want anything other than to make a man happy, a man to whom you gave happiness and who taught you to receive happiness from his hand? All the rest will mature in him, for you, because of him, with him, by way of him.”

– Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), from a letter to Victoria Ocampo (1890—1979), Argentina, dated April, 1938, in: “This America Of Ours. The Letters of Gabriela Mistral and Victoria Ocampo”, translated from the Spanish by Elizabeth Horan and Doris Meyer

“My Own Boy, Your sonnet is quite lovely, and it is a marvel that those red roseleaf lips of yours should have been made no less for music and song than for madness of kissing.”

– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to Alfred Douglas (1870—1945), Babbacombe Cliff, dated January, 1893, in “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters”

“There is so much in life that does not lend itself to definition, analysis, even translation into human language. This has been true of much, very much, of my life in recent years.”

“My beloved one, I don’t know why I waited so long before saying I loved you. I just wanted to be sure and not to say easy, empty words. But it seems to me now love was there since the beginning. Anyway, now it is here, it is love and my heart aches. I am happy to be so bitterly unhappy because I know you are unhappy, too, and it is sweet to have part of the same sadness. With you pleasure was love, and now pain is love too. We must know every kind of love. We’ll know the joy of meeting again. I want it, I need it, and I’ll get it. Wait for me. I wait for you. I love you more even than I said, more maybe than you know. I’ll write very often. Write to me very often too.”

– Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986), from a letter to Nelson Algren (1909—1981), dated May 18, 1947, in: “A Transatlantic Love Affair. Letters to Nelson Algren” (https://archive.nytimes.com/)

“So your poor leggies have again hurt you, very naughty of them – I wish I were there to have rubbed them at least!”

– Tsesarevich Nikolay Alexandrovich (the future last Emperor of all Russia, Nikolay II, 1868—1918), from a letter to his future wife, Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine at birth (the future last Empress of Russia, 1872—1918), dated August 3, 1894

“You claim that my letters are more beautifully written and better composed than yours, but that’s not true. Haven’t you noticed how in a few words you can usually deal with a matter, whereas I need so many?”

“I’m writing to you because I don’t have anyone to send these lines so they’ll be read, and yet unread because unanswered. So it’s like a stone falling into the water. It’s like talking to myself, feeling sorry for myself, cheering myself up.”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated September 9, 1918, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“I feel such terrible pangs when you write how much you want me, and I also feel I have rather cat-and-moused you by saying one time I was coming, and the next time not, and so on.”

– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated October 21, 1927, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”

“There are different ways of being busy. Mine is unnatural. It is a blend of the darkest disquiet, which I suffer from because of trivialities that I shouldn’t be busying myself with, of complete hopelessness, of neurasthenic fears and of helpless endeavours. My wing has been broken.”

– Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), from a letter to Vikenty Veresayev (1867—1945),Moscow, dated July 22—28, 1931, in: “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis

“Sometimes I have the feeling that there is a great mass of unspoken words between us which here and there threatens to rear itself into a wall between us.”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), in a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated December 24,1941, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange

“What beautiful verses you sent me! Their rhythm is as soft as the caresses of your voice when you mix my name with your tender chirping. Allow me to find them the most beautiful of your verses…”

“Your letter has just been put into my hands (Friday morning). I read it & lay it down & answer it at once, for at the close of the week I am never so much my own master as at the beginning & as I can only write a short letter now I will postpone a more full reply till Monday.”

– John Miller (1819—1895), from a letter to Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821—1895), Philadelphia, February 16, 1855, in: “If You Love That Lady Don’t Marry Her: The Courtship Letters of Sally Mcdowell and John Miller, 1854—1856″

“I kiss you on the abdomen – a long long fervent kiss – ”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated June 23, 1929, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“Let’s hope that fate, at least one more time before I close my eyes forever, might want to be kind to me and lead you back to me, so that I may get back one reason for living, which now is missing completely.”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated March 14, 1929, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“Most dear little being,

I miss you. I’ve received all your little letters safely, and you’re very sweet to have been such a good correspondent. But it really grieves me to feel you so glum, there far away, and to be glum myself here.”

– Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986), from a letter to Jean-Paul Sartre (1905—1980), Paris, dated 5 July, 1939, in “Letters to Sartre”, translated from the French by Quintin Hoare

“I have LOVED more than anyone, a presumptuous phrase which means ‘quite like others,’ and perhaps even more than average person. Every affection is known to me, ‘the storms of the heart’ have ‘poured out their rain’ on me. And then chance, force of circumstances, causes solitude to increase little by little around me, and now I am alone, absolutely alone.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated 25 November, 1872, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“I can’t explain why you don’t write to me.

I haven’t done anything to you, I haven’t wanted anything from you. I really don’t know. That I nevertheless write to you is because of memories…

I have nothing more than memories – well then, so I live in them.”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated September 2, 1918, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“Of course I can’t help thinking much of the future – Winters & summers. – Every-

thing. But above all – Always you – US. – You come first. – And have come first even when you believed you didn’t – & perhaps I made you feel you didn’t. – ”

“I miss you, you know. I miss your lips, your hands, your whole warm and strong body, and your face and your smiles, your voice. I miss you. But I like missing you so hard because it makes me feel strongly that you are not a dream, you are real, you are living, and I’ll meet you again… I kiss your dear face, your sweet lips with the most loving kisses.”

– Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986), from a letter to Nelson Algren (1909—1981), dated Friday, May 23, 1947, in: “A Transatlantic Love Affair. Letters to Nelson Algren” (https://archive.nytimes.com/)

“Last night I lay and complained bitterly to myself and longed for someone to come and take these cares off my shoulders.”

– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated September 28, 1927, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”

“… there is nothing more irksome or less poetic, one may say, than the prosaic struggle for existence which takes away the joy of life and drags one into apathy.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Lydia Mizinova (1870—1939), Yalta, dated July 11, 1893, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“I am in such a state of tiredness that I have – one could say aphasia – a kind of agraphia, and I don’t want to tire your beautiful eyes trying to decipher these meaningless hieroglyphics.”

– Marcel Proust (1871—1922), from a letter to Anna de Noailles (1876—1933), dated 1912 (http://theesotericcuriosa.blogspot.com/)

“… if I am more passionate than other people, that is just my pain, my suffering. Forgive me if I was in the way.”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated July 16, 1917, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“I cannot force myself. To write to you means to make a difficult and unnatural gesture. There would be something artificial about it – a lie, in your opinion – and that would cause me pain. It would not be a letter to you but a manufactured product.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Moscow, September 20, 1911, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“Dear little being,

I’m not going to write you a long letter, though I’ve hundreds of things to tell you, because I prefer to tell you them in person…”

– Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986), from a letter to Jean-Paul Sartre (1905—1980), Albertville, dated July 27, 1938, in: “Letters to Sartre”, translated by Quintin Hoare

“Reconcile yourself to the idea that my letters to you will become frequent (although I repeat that this won’t last long, probably). I’m not much of a master when it comes to letters: you struggle and struggle, the words won’t come off the pen, and I can’t express my thoughts properly…”

– Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), from a letter to his brother Nikolay Bulgakov (1898—1966), Moscow, February 21, 1930, in: “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis

“I owe the best days of my life and my deepest-felt emotions to literature.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to his brother, Alexander Chekhov (1855—1913), Melikhovo, dated January 21, 1895, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“Dearest, I feel old, withered, as if my vitality had ebbed. Love me all the same please.”

– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated October 3, 1927, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”

“Thanks – thanks for all the letters – You are very – very sweet to me – It was nice to

have them even if they did make me sad.”

– Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), from a letter to Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), Taos, New Mexico, dated June 30, 1929, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“In that dark year when I was crushed, and the cards suggested only one thing —

that I should put an end to it all and shoot myself – you came and lifted my spirits.”

– Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), from a letter to Vikenty Veresayev (1867—1945), Moscow, dated July 22—28, 1931, in: “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis

“You are so lovely in character and appearance that in your company one’s spirits are lifted; you breathe warm-heartedness, you look on the world with such kindness that one wants to do only good and pleasant things for you in return. You will not believe how glad I am that I have met you.”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated July 16, 1917, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“My whole life is a romance with my own soul.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Pyotr Yurkevich (1889—1968), dated July 21, 1916, in: “A Russian Psyche: The Poetic Mind Of Marina Tsvetaeva” by Alyssa W. Dinega,

“I thought at first I would give my writing a miss today, because I’m so terribly tired, and also because I thought I had nothing to say just now. But of course I have a great deal to write about. I shall allow my thoughts free rein; you are bound to pick them up anyway.”

– Etty Hillesum (1914—1943), from a letter to Tidei, from a Westerbork transit camp for Jews, dated August 18, 1943, in: “An Interrupted Life: Diaries and Letters 1941—43. And Letters from Westerbork”, translated from the Dutch by Arnold J. Pomerans

“I’d like to have you sit near me – & talk over many things. – I have often wanted that – even during the winter – But —? – Once upon a time we talked over everything.”

“I labour in vain to calm my mind – my soul has been overwhelmed by sorrow and disappointment. Every thing fatigues me – this is a life that cannot last long. It is you who must determine with respect to futurity – and, when you have, I will act accordingly – I mean, we must either resolve to live together, or part for ever, I cannot bear these continual struggles. – But I wish you to examine carefully your own heart and mind; and, if you perceive the least chance of being happier without me than with me, or if your inclination leans capriciously to that side, do not dissemble; but tell me frankly that you will never see me more. I will then adopt the plan I mentioned to you – for we must either live together, or I will be entirely independent.

My heart is so oppressed, I cannot write with precision – You know however that what I so imperfectly express, are not the crude sentiments of the moment – You can only contribute to my comfort (it is the consolation I am in need of) by being with me – and, if the tenderest friendship is of any value, why will you not look to me for a degree of satisfaction that heartless affections cannot bestow?”

– Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 -1797), from a letter to Gilbert Imlay (1754—1828), Sweden, dated July 1, 1795, in: “The Love Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay”

“… look, she has not written to me for three days; and she leaves me in the depth of this loneliness without even that echo of life which would be heard in a letter from her. I wait for it every morning, to take from it strength to last and live, through the day, at least until the evening, when the anguish assaults me with fiercer strength, until it suffocates me”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated March 22, 1929, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“I certainly don’t feel any inhibition about asking for your heart. I ask for it shamelessly and need it…”

– Iris Murdoch (1919—1999), from a letter to Brigid Brophy (1929—1995), dated 1963, in: “Living on Paper: Letters of Iris Murdoch, 1934—1995”

“I have become anxious and fearful, I keep expecting disasters and I have become superstitious.”

– Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), from a letter to Vikenty Veresayev (1867—1945), Moscow, dated July 22—28, 1931, in: “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis

“Be – yes, we can and are allowed to do so. To be – be there for another. Even if it is only a few words, alla breve, one letter once a month: the heart will know how to live.”

– Paul Celan (1920—1970), from a letter to Ingeborg Bachmann (1926—1973), dated October 31-November 1, 1957, in: “Correspondence: Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan”, translated from the German by Wieland Hoban

“I do not want you to forget me entirely. I often think of you, but with a feeling of pain. It seems you loved me enough to have the courage to love me more. I had, it seems to me, so many ties to you, that you should forgive me some of the faults which might cause your impression of me to be impaired… but it is my fate to love more than I am loved. In all feelings except the feeling of love, my heart has given more than it has received. Oh well, one must again do without you. I derive some pride from this disposition of my soul, but no pain. (…). I still need a few years to suppress my heart entirely.”

– Germaine de Staël (1766 -1817), from a letter to Madame de Pastoret, Coppet? September 10, 1800, in: “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper

“I’ve loved everything, I knew how to love everything except the other, the other who was alive. The other has always bothered me; it was a wall against which I broke, I didn’t know how to live with the living. Hence my feeling that I was not a woman but a soul. […] You simply have loved me… I told you: there is a Soul. You said: there is a Life.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Konstantin Rodzevich (1895—1988), in: “Marina Tsvetaeva: The Double Beat of Heaven and Hell” by Lily Feiler

“From your silken hair to your delicate feet you are perfection to me.”

– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas (1870—1945), Courtfield Gardens, Kensington, dated May 20, 1895, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters” by Merlin Holland

“I have only you in this world. I only have you, and I love only you.”

– Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), from a letter to Doris Dana (1920—2006), dated April 6, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena

“You know not what it is to bear thro’ weary years a shattered heart with its vacant chambers, its extinguished fires, – its dethroned image, – its broken shrine: with its silent hopelessness, – its terrible struggles, – its anguished longings: with its sad memories, – its humiliating present, and without a future. You know not what it is to live, with the spring of life broken; to live on and on amid the scattered debris of all that you valued in life; to have existence, but to spend it “among the tombs” of every thing that made it a blessing. You know not what it is to have your pure name spoken by polluted lips; to have your high and cherished honor assailed by mouths whose very breath was infamy; – and to have your grief, that sacred thing, – so deep as to be powerless even to throb out an appeal for mercy, denied the last poor privilege of decent privacy.”

– Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821—1895), from a letter to John Miller (1819—1895), Colalto, dated October 13, 1854, in: “If You Love That Lady Don’t Marry Her: The Courtship Letters of Sally Mcdowell and John Miller, 1854—1856″

“I feel that without you, although I try very hard to resist, I am dying. I am dying because I no longer know what to do with my life; in this horrible loneliness there is no more sense for me in living – neither value nor purpose. The meaning, the value, the purpose of my life all were you – in hearing the sound of your voice close to me, in seeing the heaven of your eyes and the light of your glance – the light that was brightening my spirit. Now everything is dead and extinguished, inside me and around me. This is the terrible truth. There is no point in my making it known to you; but it is so.”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated March 20, 1929, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“I have always translated the body into the soul (dis-bodied it!), have so gloried ‘physical’ love – in order to be able to like it – that suddenly nothing was left of it. Engrossing myself in it, hollowed it out. Penetrating into it, ousted it. Nothing remained of it but myself: Soul”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), dated August 2, 1926, in: “The Same Solitude”, translated from the Russian by Catherine Ciepiela

“I gather you don’t want to see me briefly. I feel depressed about this, and about the way we can’t manage, because you are important to me and might one day help me a lot. I can’t spare you, although you say I’m not exactly active. This is gloomy stuff, I’m afraid – your letter made me feel sad and ineffectual, desiring yet not finding in myself a strong full-blooded response of some sort to your fierceness.

I’ll write again before long if encouraged to, and even probably if not encouraged to. My love…”

– Iris Murdoch (1919—1999), from a letter to Brigid Brophy (1929—1995), dated March 18, 1960, in: “Living on Paper: Letters of Iris Murdoch, 1934—1995”

“Silence is painful; but in silence things take form, and we must wait and watch. In us, in our secret depth, lies the knowing element which sees and hears that which we do not see nor hear. All our perceptions, all the things we have done, all that we are Today, dwelt once in that knowing, silent depth, that treasure chamber in the soul.”

– Kahlil Gibran (1883—1931), from a letter to Mary Elizabeth Haskell (1873—1964), dated March 1, 1916, in: “Beloved prophet; the love letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell and her private journal”

“My letters chase after you, but you are elusive.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Alexey Suvorin (1834—1912), Melikhovo, dated August 1, 1892, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“When separated from you, it seems time has lost its wings and yet the heart has somehow found a means of breaking the length of this bitter separation.”

– Monti, from a letter to Germaine de Staël (1766—1817), Berlin, dated April 9, 1804, in: “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper

“Listen to me; I love you tenderly, I think of you every day and on every occasion: when working I think of you. I have gained certain intellectual benefits which you deserve more than I do, and of which you ought to make a longer use. Consider too, that my spirit is often near to yours, and that it wishes you a long life and a fertile inspiration in true joys.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), Nohant, dated December 8, 1872, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“Happiness, sweet friend, is a solemn thing. And joy is closer to tears than laughter…”

– Marcel Proust (1871—1922), quoting Victor Hugo in a letter to Madame Straus, dated November 11, 1918 (http://www.yorktaylors.free-online.co.uk/)

“… my heart is so constituted that everything it loves and treasures grows deeply rooted in it, and when uptorn, causes wounds and suffering.”

– Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821—1881), from a letter to Maria Dmitryevna Issayeva, dated June 4, 1855, in: “Fyodor Dostoevsky: Memoirs, Letters and Autobiographical Novels”, translated from the Russian by Ethel Colburn Mayne, John Middleton Murry, and S.S. Koteliansky

“St. Ambrose says: ‘It is easier to find men who have kept their innocence than those who have done penance for their sins.’”

“I reckon that the best thing would be if, when you have read them [notes], you threw them into the fire. The stove long ago became my favourite editor. I like it for the fact that, without rejecting anything, it is equally willing to swallow laundry bills, the beginnings of letters and even, shame, oh shame, verses!”

– Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), from a letter to his friend Pavel Popov, Moscow, dated April 24, 1932, in “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis

“I cannot say much about that which fills my heart and soul. I feel like a seeded field in midwinter, and I know that spring is coming. My brooks will run and the little life that sleeps in me will rise to the surface when called.”

“I love you with all my might – you’ve been so nice, so warm, I have such trust in you, my heart, my dear heart. I hold you tight, as I do in the morning. Near or far, I’m all yours.”

– Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986), from a letter to Jean-Paul Sartre (1905—1980), dated January 25, 1947, in: “Letters to Sartre”, translated from the French by Quintin Hoare

“The more the days go by, the more my anguish and despair grow; and I don’t know what will happen to me tomorrow ….”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated March 20, 1929, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“My Dear dearest Boy, I want so much to write to you, but it seems I don’t know much to say.”

– Carrie Hughes (1873—1938), from a letter to Langston Hughes (1902—1967), dated March 8, 1935, in: “My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes’s Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926—1938”

“… nothing is knowable together (everything – forgotten together), neither honor, nor God, nor a tree. Only your body which is closed to you (you have no entrance). Think about it: the strangeness: an entire area of the soul, which I (you) cannot enter alone. I CANNOT ENTER ALONE. And it’s not God who is needed, but a human being. Becoming through another person.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), dated August 2, 1926, in: “The Same Solitude”, by Catherine Ciepiela

“This is just to tell you good night – very tenderly – and to tell you how I am always

telling you all the things I do as I do them – I wish I could hold you warm and close—

Good Night

A kiss – very quiet – ”

– Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), from a letter to Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), York Beach, Maine, dated May 27, 1928, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“let us love one another, my God! my God! Let us love one another or we are lost.”

– George Sand (1804—1876), from a letter to Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), Nohant, dated September 14, 1871, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“The weather here is very cold and sleety today. This has been a very long winter it seems. I had a letter writing fit tonight and did not want to leave you out.”

– Carrie Hughes (1873—1938), from a letter to Langston Hughes (1902—1967), dated March 8, 1935, in: “My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes’s Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926—1938”

“my only wish is that you are all well and in good spirits, and send me a few kind words from time to time.”

– Etty Hillesum (1914—1943), from a letter to Jopie, Klaas, from a Westerbork transit camp for Jews, dated July 3, 1943, in: “An Interrupted Life: Diaries and Letters 1941—43. And Letters from Westerbork″, translated from the Dutch by Arnold J. Pomerans

“I have been living in one of Dostoevsky’s novels, you see, not in one of Jane Austen’s.”

– T.S. Eliot (1888—1965), from a letter to Eleonor Hinkley, dated July 23, 1917, in: “The Letters o T.S. Eliot. Volume 1: 1898—1922”, edited by Hugh Haughton and Valeri Eliot

“She wrote to me!.. I do not see her at my side; I do not hear her speaking; but she has written to me, she has thought of me ….”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated March 22, 1929, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“When I looked for the person who had passed away, he gathered inside of me in peculiar and such surprising ways, and it was deeply moving to feel that he now existed only there.”

– Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), from a letter to Countess Margot Sizzo-Noris-Crouy,, dated January 6, 1923, in: “The Dark Interval. Rainer Maria Rilke. Letters on Loss, Grief and Transformation”, translated by Ulrich Baer

“There are many days when you don’t write. What do you do, then? No, my darling, I am not jealous, but sometimes worried. Come soon; I warn you, if you delay, you will find me ill. Fatigue and your absence are too much.

Your letters are the joy of my days, and my days of happiness are not many.”

– Napoleon Bonaparte (1769—1821), from a letter to Joséphine de Beauharnais (1763—1814), dated April, 1796 (pbs.org)

“In your letter this morning you say something which gives me courage. I must remember it. You write that it is my duty to you and to myself to live in spite of everything. I think that is true. I shall try and I shall do it.”

– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas (1870—1945), HM Prison, Hollowa, dated Monday, Evening, April 29, 1895, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters” by Merlin Holland

“I fell asleep & dreamt you had come & we were in the bathroom together – both naked – You turned around stooped down & with your hands pulled Fluffy open – I had a terrific erection – Fluffy looked like the big Black Iris which next to the Blue Lines is closest to my heart – & as I took hold of you – & rammed my Little Man into you, you said with sighs – sighs so deep so heartbreaking – you must leave him no matter what happens. And I saw Fluffy – I saw him wet & shiny ramming into Fluffy & felt like God must feel. – And you were beside yourself & your

smooth behind seemed to grow a bit larger – & it moved – & you pushed – & you seemed to wish to suck in – & I rammed & rammed & you seemed to want to hold him – & yelled: Don’t take him out – I’ll hear that voice to my dying day – the agony of it – & I moaned, No, no, it dare not be – I & mine are accursed – And I drew him out. Wet, erect – panting – You crying. I half mad. – I awoke. No wet dream. – Even that I seemed to control. – Thank all that is that I had this dream. – I have had no dreams in ages – any kind. Not awake. Not asleep. – And life without my dreaming is terrible.”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated July 6, 1929, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933

“What wisdom is to the philosopher, what God is to his saint, you are to me.”

– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas (1870—1945), Courtfield Gardens, Kensington, dated, May 20, 1895, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters” by Merlin Holland

“They all kept my poetry. They all gave me back my soul. (gave me back to my soul)”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Abram Vishnyak (1895—1943), in: “Florentine nights. Nine Letters With a Tenth Kept Back and an Eleventh Received” from “Florentine nights. Nine Letters With a Tenth Kept Back and an Eleventh Received”, in: “Readings: The Poetics of Blanchot, Joyce, Kafka, Kleist, Lispector, and Tsvetayeva” by H. Cixous, translated from the French by Verena A. Conley

“… you have no need to be loved, and I love you; that is again a proof of what I have always observed, that one easily obtains what one very little desires.”

– Germaine de Staël (1766—1817), from a letter to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749—1832), Berlin, dated April 9, 1804, in: “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper

“Sweetest – Sweetheart. I’m quiet but [my] heart is breaking because somehow I feel I can’t let you see into that heart as I want you to see it. – I know it is worth it. I know it will add to your strength. And as the consciousness of you – what you are – adds to mine altho’ it may eventually kill me…”

“… you see you don’t know what my love is, you see I’m right to regret loving you so much, since this love is useless and tiresome to you. Oh, I love you, that’s certainly true! I love you despite you, despite myself, despite the entire world, despite God, despite the Devil, who also has a hand in this. I love you, I love you, I love you! Whether I’m happy or unhappy, gay or sad, I love you. I love you, do with me what you will.”

“I lose myself in the recollections of my childhood like an old man… I do not expect anything further in life than a succession of sheets of paper to besmear with black. It seems to me that I am crossing an endless solitude to go I don’t know where. And it is I who am at the same time the desert, the traveller, and the camel.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“I can’t explain myself. Everything about me is mysterious to me and I do not make any very strong effort to solve the puzzle.”

– E. B. White (1899—1985), from a letter to Arthur Hudson, New York, dated April, 1, 1955, in: “Letters of E.B. White”, edited by Lobrano Guth and Martha White

“I love you so and I do want to see you. I wish I could live with you or where you are and I’d never worry again.”

– Carrie Hughes (1873—1938), from a letter to Langston Hughes (1902—1967), dated March 8, 1935, in: “My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes’s Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926—1938”

“The only words with any meaning are these: come back. I want to be with you, I love you. If you hear this, you will prove yourself courageous and sincere.

Otherwise, I pity you.

But I love you, embrace you, and know we’ll see each other again.”

– Arthur Rimbaud (1854—1891), from a letter to Paul Verlaine (1844—1896), dated July 5, 1873, in: “I Promise to be Good. The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud”, translated from the French by Watt Mason

“now I am here alone: without you, without life ….”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated March 15, 1929, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“Truth is, so great, that I wouldn’t like to speak, or sleep, or listen, or love. To feel myself trapped, with no fear of blood, outside time and magic, within your own fear, and your great anguish, and within the very beating of your heart. All this madness, if I asked it of you, I know, in your silence, there would be only confusion. I ask you for violence, in the nonsense, and you, you give me grace, your light and your warmth. I’d like to paint you, but there are no colors, because there are so many, in my confusion, the tangible form of my great love.”

– Frida Kahlo (1907—1954), from a letter to Diego Rivera (1886—1957), in: “The Diary Of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait”

“How stupid it is that that heart of mine has virtually turned me into a prisoner. Some

day I’ll ignore it – & I’ll do anything I feel I must do – heart or no heart. Rather death than

living as I live.”

“… believe me, all you are suffering – your tiredness, your aches, all the pains that seem to be coming from the body but are not, pains of which no physician will ever find the cause-have on the contrary their root in this: that they are Life, all the Life that is in you, all the possibilities of being that are in you and live in you, without your even realizing it. They wear you out, distress you, depress you, exasperate you, continuously and vehemently taking your spirit by storm, or trying to forcibly remove the blocks of your conscience – perhaps too narrow and bourgeois – inside which you keep yourself bottled up.”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated July 13, 1928, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“At every moment of my life, God knows, I have always feared offending you, not God. I have tried to please you, rather than him.”

“Darling, you’re failure to reply to my letter has reduced me to a state of ridiculous panic. This simply mustn’t be. Please write at once, even if it’s only to tell me I’m impossible. I’m always rather impetuous & foolish on paper. And off it too. You must be patient with me. I care for you rather a lot.”

– Iris Murdoch (1919—1999), from a letter to David Hicks (1929—1998), Brussels, dated November 6, 1945, in: “Iris Murdoch, a Writer At War. Letters and Diaries, 1939—1945″

“… to a writer, a child is an alibi. If I should never in all my years write anything worth reading, I can always explain that by pointing to my child.”

– E. B. White (1899—1985), from a letter to Gustave s. Lobrano, New York, dated December, 1930, in: “Letters of E.B. White”, edited by Lobrano Guth and Martha White

“I don’t love you anymore; on the contrary, I detest you. You are a vile, mean, beastly slut. You don’t write to me at all; you don’t love your husband; you know how happy your letters make him, and you don’t write him six lines of nonsense…”

– Napoleon Bonaparte (1769—1821), from a letter to Joséphine de Beauharnais (1763—1814), dated November, 1796 (pbs.org)

“I wish, my love, that your love were less sure of me, so that you would be more anxious. But the more reason I have given you for confidence in the past, the more you neglect me now.”

“You leave me without news of you? You say that you prefer to be forgotten, rather than to complain ceaselessly, as it is very useless and since you will not be forgotten; complain then…”

– George Sand (1804—1876), from a letter to Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), Nohant, dated May 7, 1875, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“I love you all the more because you are growing more unhappy. How you torment yourself, and how you disturb yourself about life! for all of which you complain, is life; it has never been better for anyone or in any time. One feels it more or less, one understands it more or less, one suffers with it more or less, and the more one is in advance of the age one lives in, the more one suffers. We pass like shadows on a background of clouds which the sun seldom pierces, and we cry ceaselessly for the sun which can do no more for us. It is for us to clear away our clouds.”

– George Sand (1804—1876), from a letter to Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), Nohant, dated December 8, 1874, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“Do go on doing a lot of walking & keep up your love of nature, for that is the right way to understand art better & better. Painters understand nature & love her & teach us to see.”

– Vincent Van Gogh (1853—1890), from a letter to his brother, Theo Van Gogh (1857—1891), London, dated January, 1874, in: “The Letters Of Vincent Van Gogh”, translated from the French and Dutch by Arnold Pomerans

“I need to be alone. I am tired of grandeur; all my feelings have dried up. I no longer care about my glory. At twenty-nine I have exhausted everything.”

– Napoleon Bonaparte (1769—1821), from a letter to his brother, Joseph Bonaparte (1768—1844) (pbs.org)

“I love you … —

Don’t you know it – Should I be silent? —

I haven’t reread this letter – it may be hard to make out – Don’t waste time over it.

– If you [have] written don’t throw away the letters. Send what you write. I’d tear this up. —

I know it must sound broken – & not beautiful – not flowing – not as I should like it to be. —

But I’m not flowing – not beautiful these days. I am broken – & I don’t like myself at all. But

I’m trying hard to find my line again. You’ll help me. I must believe you will. —

Won’t you?”

“All the week I have been thinking intensely of you and what you have done for me. And I have written you several letters that I have not sent because none of them were true enough. There were too many words in them, I guess. But all of them contained in some form or other these simple statements:

I love you.

I need you very much.

I cannot bear to hurt you.

Those are the only meaning in all that I say here. You have been kinder to me than any other person in the world. I could not help but love you. You have made me dream greater dreams than I have ever dreamed before. And without you it will not be possible to carry out those dreams. But I cannot stand to disappoint you either. The memory of your face when I went away on Monday is more than I am able to bear. I must have been terribly stupid to have hurt you so, terribly lacking in understanding, terribly blind to what you have wanted me to see. You must not let me hurt you again. I know well that I am dull and slow, but I do not want to remain that way. I don’t know what to say except that I am sorry that I have not changed rapidly enough into what you would have me be. The other unsent letters contained more words than this one. They were much longer. They were much more emotionally revealing, perhaps. But I do not know how to write what I want to say any simpler than it is said here. Words only confuse, and I must not offer excuses for the things in which I have failed. Your face was so puzzled and so weary that day. I shall never forget it. You have been my friend… and I did not want to disappoint you. If I can do no better than I have done, then for your own sake, you must let me go. You must be free, too… At first we had wings. If there are no wings now for me, you must be free! We can still fly ahead always like the bright dream that is truth, and goodness. Free!”

– Langston Hughes (1902—1967), from a surviving draft of a letter to Charlotte Mason, dated February 23, 1929, in: “The Life of Langston Hughes: Volume I: 1902—1941, I, Too, Sing, America”, by Arnold Rampersad

“I quiver in every nerve with pain. I am wrecked with the recurring tides of hysteria. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. Why? Because on every side there comes in nothing but the tidings of evil, of indifference, of pretence.”

– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to More Adey, Reading Prison, dated May 12, 1897, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters” by Merlin Holland

“Soon, I hope, I will be holding you in my arms; then I will cover you with a million hot kisses, burning like the equator.”

– Napoleon Bonaparte (1769—1821), from a letter to Joséphine de Beauharnais (1763—1814), dated November, 1796 (pbs.org)

“Let me kiss you on the mouth – let me kiss your neck – behind the eyes – let me kiss each eye – & mouth again. Let me kiss the abdomen – each breast – each side of your sweetest of all behinds… & lie there – And then let [me] hold you firmly & let happen what will. I think were you here now I’d even risk all – just without anything. Madness I know – But I am mad with You penetrating every fiber of me – every pulse

beat is you – And you ought to know it. And you don’t – And you don’t believe it now – That’s what I have forfeited. —

That’s the cross I bear – which robs me of all initiative. – Has killed the dream.”

“There is so much that moves me today that I don’t know how I’ll ever end this letter. And I long for you so terribly!”

– Eberhard Arnold (1883—1935), from a letter to Emmy von Hollander (1884—1980), Breslau, dated April 28, 1907, in: “Love letters. Eberhard Arnold and Emmy von Hollander”

“Your ghost everywhere – & I lonely beyond words…”

“O my love, you whom I cherish above all things, white narcissus in an unmown field…”

– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas (1870—1945), Courtfield Gardens, Kensington, dated May 20, 1895, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters” by Merlin Holland

“I have never been able to ‘do’ anything; I can only let things take their course and if need be, suffer. This is where my strength lies, and it is great strength indeed. But for myself, not for others.”

– Etty Hillesum (1914—1943), from a letter to Maria, from a Westerbork transit camp for Jews, Westerbork, dated July 10, 1943, in: “An Interrupted Life: Diaries and Letters 1941—43. And Letters from Westerbork”, translated from the Dutch by Arnold J. Pomerans

“When I’m with you, nothing seems terrible to me, not even leaving you. But away from you, the slightest fear is unbearable. I love you passionately – I’m empty and miserable without you.”

– Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986), from a letter to Jean-Paul Sartre (1905—1980), Albertville, dated 27 July 1938, in: “Letters to Sartre”, translated by Quintin Hoare

“I insist on embracing you today: I do it affectionately, since you love me so well.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated December 22, 1872, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“… your letters, so airy, so intelligent and full of life, in a moment of so many difficulties and so much sadness… They were the only air I could breathe! All the rest, suffocation!”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated August 20, 1926, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“For a long time I’ve been wanting to write to you in the evening after one of those outings with friends […]. I wanted to bring you my conqueror’s joy and lay it at your feet, as they did in the Age of the Sun King. And then, tired out by all the shouting, I always simply went to bed. Today I’m doing it to feel the pleasure you don’t yet know, of turning abruptly from friendship to love, from strength to tenderness. I am mastering my love for you… This happens much more often than I admit to you, but seldom when I’m writing to you. Try to understand me: I love you while paying attention to external things. At Toulouse I simply loved you. Tonight I love you on a spring evening. I love you with the window open. You are mine, and things are mine, and my love alters the things around me and the things around me alter my love.”

– Jean-Paul Sartre (1905—1980), from a letter to Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986), in: “Witness to My Life: The Letters Of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone De Beayvoir, 1926—1939”

“Death, especially the most completely felt and experienced death, has never remained an obstacle to life for a surviving individual, because its innermost essence is not contrary to us (as one may occasionally suspect), but it is more knowing about life than we are in our most vital moments. I always think that such a great weight, with its tremendous pressure, somehow has the task of forcing us into a deeper, more intimate layer of life so that we may grow out of it all the more vibrant and fertile.”

– Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), from a letter to Adelheid von der Marwitz, dated September 11, 1919, in: “The Dark Interval. Rainer Maria Rilke. Letters on Loss, Grief and Transformation”, translated from the German by Ulrich Baer

“Tell me you haven’t forgotten me.

You couldn’t.

I always have you with me.”

“… you, so close beside me, so sensitive that one could drown in your sensitivity.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Moscow, dated July 23, 1910, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“Love is a want of my heart. I have examined myself lately with more care than formerly, and find, that to deaden is not to calm the mind – Aiming at tranquillity, I have almost destroyed all the energy of my soul – almost rooted out what renders it estimable – Yes, I have damped that enthusiasm of character, which converts the grossest materials into a fuel, that imperceptibly feeds hopes, which aspire above common enjoyment.”

– Mary Wollstonecraft (1759—1797), from a letter to Gilbert Imlay (1754—1828), Sweden, dated July 3, 1795, in: “The Love Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay”

“I stretch out my hands towards you. Oh! may I live to touch your hair and your hands. I think that your love will watch over my life. If I should die, I want you to live a gentle peaceful existence somewhere, with flowers, pictures, books, and lots of work.”

– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas (1870—1945), HM Prison, Hollowa, dated Monday Evening, April 29, 1895, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters” by Merlin Holland

“You ought to be here – Or I there – Ever in each other’s arms – Floating into space – No one to disturb – Just kisses & love – & great peace – Even when no kisses – kisses take place – Two Souls have become One – Flesh does not touch – ”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), New York City, dated late June 1918, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“There is sorrow in the hour when a man is born into the world, but also joy – deep and unspeakable – thankfulness so great that it reacheth the highest Heavens. Yes the Angels of God they smile they hope and they rejoice when a man is born in the world. There is sorrow in the hour of death – but there too joy unspeakable when it is the hour of death of one who has fought a good fight.”

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