For The Poet Is A Light And Winged And Holy Thing,

The darkness was more compassionate to his swollen and violent heart.

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando

- take it all / - it’s too little

- Agata Tuszyńska, tr. Regina Grol

He's got all that mind, all that inner country he keeps going around in, mines and craters, caverns and dead ends.

Niall Williams, History of the Rain

Years later, back from Mexico or South America, he'd admit he was tired of history, of always discovering the ruin by ruining it,

Ada Limón, Cyrus & The Snakes

I was so pleased to be seen

- Heather Christle, The Crying Book

tragedy is thinking in action, thinking upon action, for the sake of action

- Simon Critchley, Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us

‘It is equally vain,’ she thought, ‘for you to think you can protect me, or for me to think I can worship you.’

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando

How I did waste and exhaust my heart.

Anne Carson, Kinds of Water

'But you tell me profound loves do not satisfy you. You crave to give and to receive stronger sensations. I understand, but that is only a phase. You can play the game now and then, to heighten passion, but profound loves are the loves which suit your true self, and they alone will satisfy you. The more you act like yourself the nearer you come to a fulfillment of your real needs. You are still terribly afraid to be hurt; your imaginary sadism shows that. So afraid to be hurt that you want to take the lead and hurt first. I do not despair of reconciling you to your own image.'

Anaïs Nin, Henry and June

The room will explode when I sit at the side of your bed and you talk to me. I don't hear your words: your voice reverberates against my body like another kind of caress

Anaïs Nin, Henry and June