Mahmoud Darwish, Tr. By Sinan Antoon, From “In The Presence Of Absence,”

“If by romantic they mean someone who dreams, I am a romantic, but I shall keep my crown of dreams a secret.”

— Anais Nin, 1917

“But I also think she was crying because, through the music, she might have guessed there were other ways of feeling, there were more delicate existences and even a certain luxury of the soul. She knew that there were a lot of things she didn’t know how to understand.”

— Clarice Lispector, from The Hour of the Star.

April 13, 1913 Letters to Felice by Franz Kafka First published : 1973

“IPHIGENIA : I shall wash blood with blood to get rid of the defilement—”

— Euripides, Iphigenia Among the Taurians (tr. by Anne Carson)

“When we’re most intense—who’ll flinch?”

— Arthur Rimbaud, from Selected Poems & Prose; “Phrases,”

La pureté est absolument invulnérable en tant que pureté (...). Mais elle est éminemment vulnérable en ce sens que toute atteinte du mal la fait souffrir (S. Weil, Pesanteur, 1943, p. 79).

“Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

Christina Rossetti, from Poems and Prose; “An Afterthought”

Text ID: Sure she kept one part of Eden / Angels could not strip her of.

She naturally loved solitary places, vast views, and to feel herself for ever and ever and ever alone.

Virginia Woolf, Orlando: A Biography