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.”
– 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
“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
“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
