What Sense Is There In Pain At All - However We Contrive It For Ourselves As We Cast About For Ways To

Thought and life are as the poles asunder.

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando

When you have nothing to say, set something on fire.

Richard Siken, Landscape with Fruit Rot and Millipede

Seam: ‘Interviewer’s Note IV’ by Tarfia Faizullah

The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead. (Prescience? Perhaps.) 'Which means exactly what?' (Arched eyebrows, a little annoyed.) I tried to explain, but didn't do a very good job of it. Sometimes I need to write to think. So I wrote it down for her on a paper napkin. This is what I wrote: To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.

Arundhati Roy, The End of Imagination

he had eyes like drenched violets,

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando

'Come close to me, come closer. I promise it will be beautiful.'

Anaïs Nin, Henry and June

There is a solitude in this world

I cannot pierce. I would die for it.

- Ada Limón, Drowning Creek

the one that teaches water to become ice, helps grief remember how to become tears.

- Heather Christle, The Crying Book

Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.

Anaïs Nin, Henry and June

how deeply faithless we are, which is

to say: how true we are to ourselves

- Marina Tsvetaeva