mors acerba fama perpetua stabit vetus memoria facti

32

[weltenwellen]

Virginia Woolf, in a letter to Violet Dickinson, September 1907

[knifeeater]

Maybe it’s better to have the terrible times first. I don’t know. Maybe then, you can have, if you live, a better life, a real life, because you had to fight so hard to get it away⸺you know?⸺from the mad dog who held it in his teeth. But then your life has all those tooth marks, too, all those tatters and all that blood.

James Baldwin  This morning, this evening, so soon  

[weltenwellen]

Kerry Egan, On Living

[ahotknife]

oh emily wilson translation of the iliad we’re really in it now

[thewindowofthesummerhouse]

Samuel Araya

[quotemadness]

“Thank you for misunderstanding me, rejecting me and not seeing me and teaching me to always see myself.”

— Unknown

[firstfullmoon]

Anne Sexton, from “Doors, Doors, Doors,” in The Complete Poems [ID in alt text]

[derangedrhythms]

The only thing in this mean world which I desired was her love; if that were denied me I wanted the love of nobody.

Sadeq Hedayat, The Blind Owl and Other Stories; from 'The Blind Owl', tr. D. P. Costello

[macrolit]

“Emotionally, I wanted to stay. Intellectually, I wanted to leave. As always, I seemed to enjoy punishing myself.”

— Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963 Susan Sontag

[derangedrhythms]

The only thing in this mean world which I desired was her love; if that were denied me I wanted the love of nobody.

Sadeq Hedayat, The Blind Owl and Other Stories; from 'The Blind Owl', tr. D. P. Costello

[post-wars]

Robert Desnos

Translated by Paul Auster in Collected Poems (Overlook, 2004)

[tendermimi]

“I used to dream of drinking tea with you at night, I mean, to be partners in happiness and in joy. Believe me, my dear, it warms my heart, even if you are far away. Not because I love you less, because I love you more.”

— Mahmoud Darwish in a letter to Tamar Ben Ami

[fairycosmos]

“I think you lost all interest in this world. You were disappointed and discouraged, and lost interest in everything. So you abandoned your physical body. You went to a world apart and you’re living a different kind of life there. In a world inside you.”

— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (via surqrised)

[feral-ballad]

Clementine Von Radics, from In A Dream You Saw A Way To Survive; “The Fear”

[metamorphesque]

— Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

[quotemadness]

“I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.”

— Nicholas Sparks

[metamorphesque]

  ― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

[text ID: I want you always to remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you here like this?]