“Let the light and the winds colour and cleanse my blood.”
— Gabriela Mistral, from Collected Poems & Prose; “Quietness,” wr. c. 1931
“I’m a wretch. But I love, love.”
— Jack Kerouac, from “Little Motel: Satori In Paris,” published c. 1966
“There is a sense of feeling like a vulnerable mess, but giving into that, and turning it into some kind of beautiful decadence — becoming stronger through accepting the mess of yourself, accepting that you’re this feral creature full of instincts, cycles, rage and love.”
Chelsea Wolfe, from an interview conducted by Zoe Camp c. 2017
“You are transformed into a memory.”
— Anna Akhmatova, tr. by D.M. Thomas, from “Like A White Stone,”
“…the pomegranate as red as the essential essence of her dreams.”
— Igor Severyanin, from “And It’s Passed by the Seashore,” wr. c. 1922
Fyodor Dostoevsky, from a letter to his niece, Sofia Alexandrovna, written c. October 1870
“Her weary, grieving eyes, which wept with gazes sadder than tears,”
— Marcel Proust, from The Complete Short Stories; “Pleasures and Regrets,”