I Always Want To See You Laughing. It Belongs To You.

as if you could not enjoy love without pain.

Anaïs Nin, Henry and June

Much has been said and written about the ‘haiku moment’ - that it blurs the distinction between ‘subject’ and ‘object’, ‘self’ and ‘other’; that in it the perception of the essential and accidental, of the beautiful and the ugly, disappears; that it reflects things are they are in themselves.

- Yoel Hoffman, Japanese Death Poems

You never refuse. You simply don't speak.

Alicja Rybałko, A Prayer for the Forbidden Fruit tr. Regina Grol

I recognize you by the smell of rain

- Agata Tuszyńska, The Third Shore tr. Regina Grol

Thought and life are as the poles asunder.

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando

17th century astronomical art of Maria Clara Eimmart; celestial splendor from a forgotten woman who broke the bounds of her time.

(brainpickings.org)

What sense is there in pain at all - however we contrive it for ourselves as we cast about for ways to bind up the wound between us and God?

Anne Carson, Kinds of Water

Above my own life on a crippled wing I soar, oh, I soar

Julia Hartwig, On the Heights tr. Regina Grol

Some people are just that good, they have this soldier-saint part of them intact and it takes your breath because you keep forgetting human beings can sometimes be paragons.

Niall Williams, History of the Rain

burn like a meteor and leave no dust.

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando