Louise Glück, From Descending Figure; “The Garden”

“He does not know how to love anyone but himself, and when he wants to love others he always has first to transform them into himself. In that he is ingenious.”

—Daybreak, §412 (edited).

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

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

“I shall live on dreams because reality is too cruel to me. I think I shall be the kind of person nobody understands,”

— Anaïs Nin, from ‘Linotte; The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin: 1914-1920′

Margarita Karapanou, tr. by Karen Emmerich, Rien ne va plus

Marguerite Duras, The Lover

“My tenderest kisses, beloved little being — I dreamt about you.”

— Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), in a letter to Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980),  Friday [7 July 1939], Amiens, in “Letters To Sartre”, translated by Quintin Hoare

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

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

Ernest Hemingway, from his novel titled "A Farewell To Arms," originally publ. in 1929

Marina Tsvetaeva, from Poem of the End: V (tr. by Elaine Feinstein)