[oldfilmsflicker]

Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold, 2017 (dir. Griffin Dunne)

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

“I have, at present, many emotions that find no outlet. Allow me to deal with them in peace.”

— Rebecca West, from a letter to S. K. Ratcliffe written c. March 1916

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

“Dead leaves. The forest fairer for its autumn death, its colour more variant, more resonant, than in life.”

— Paul Valéry, tr. by Hilary Corke, from “In Praise of Water,” wr. c. June 1920

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

“I was always the one who gave. You took and took and took, though you always told me you loved me. That’s why I stopped loving you. But you never even realized, because you never paid attention to anyone but yourself. I can’t remember a single thing you’ve ever given me, other than exhaustion—and that exhaustion came in perfect doses, just enough so I wouldn’t be completely destroyed, and would stay with you for exactly as long as you needed me. I stopped loving you because I was tired. But since you never paid any attention to me, you never understood how tired I was.”

— Margarita Karapanou, tr. by Karen Emmerich, from “Rien ne va Plus,”

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

“I will cut adrift—I will sit on pavements and drink coffee—I will dream; I will take my mind out of its iron cage and let it swim—this fine October.”

— Virginia Woolf, from a diary entry c. October 1927 featured in “Diaries,”

[pigmenting]

“Here they come, the mongrel ghosts of my heart.”

— Allison Titus, from “The True Book of Animal Homes,” The True Book of Animal Homes 

[coral]

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

Serpents change their outward skin and permit their souls to grow and age.

Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov, tr. by Yakov Hornstein, from “Memory,” (via violentwavesofemotion)

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

“I want to tear up the earth until I find you,”

— Miguel Hernández, from Selected Poems; “Elegy,” wr. c. January 1936

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

“At dusk the setting sun’s something from a fairy tale, playing on the land with lilac-colored light and bursts of brilliant red, or cloaking everything in green and gold.”

— Ivan Bunin, from The Collected Short Stories; “Old Woman,” wr. c. 1933

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

“My head was heavy: I was deathly sad.”

— Simone de Beauvoir, tr. by Justin O’Brien, from “The Woman Destroyed,”

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

“I am alone. I am eating my heart out.”

— Simone de Beauvoir, tr. by Justin O’Brien, from “The Woman Destroyed,”

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

“Volcano of sweetness, thunder of honeycombs, vast love, vast death, vast fire.”

— Miguel Hernández, from Poems; “Elegy for Federico García Lorca,” (edited)

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

“It was more than I could deal with, so I erased it from my memory even as it was taking place.”

— Margarita Karapanou, tr. by Karen Emmerich, from “Rien ne va Plus,”

[wordsnquotes]

“I forgive you. However you disgusted me, and I disgusted you. I can’t love you. But I can forgive you.”

— Joyce Carol Oates, The Falls.

[wordsnquotes]

“I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. Silent, starving I prowl through the streets. Bread does not nourish me, dawn disquiets me, I search the liquid sound of your steps all day. I hunger for your sleek laugh, For your hands the color of the wild grain, I hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails, I want to eat your skin like a whole almond. I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your loveliness, The nose, sovereign of your arrogant face, I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes, And I walk hungry, smelling the twilight Looking for you, for your hot heart, Like a puma in the barren wilderness.”

— Pablo Neruda, I Crave Your Mouth.

[wordsnquotes]

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.”

— Pablo Neruda, excerpt from Sonnet XVII (I Do Not Love You…)