[larmoyante]

I had a sense of preparation for a love to come. Like the extension of canopies, the unrolling of ceremonial carpets, as if I must first create a marvelous world in which to house it, in which to receive adequately this guest of honor.

The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume One 1931-1934, Anaïs Nin

[vulners-blog]

"And this urge to run away from what I love is a sort of sadism I no longer pretend to understand."

— Martha Gellhorn, from a letter to Stanley Pennell

[luthienne]

This is what language is: a habitable grief. A turn of speech for the everyday and ordinary abrasion of losses such as this which hurts just enough to be a scar.

Eavan Boland, from “Habitable Grief,” New Collected Poems (W. W. Norton & Co., 2008)

[mythologyofblue]

Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.

Joan Didion, from “On Keeping a Notebook,” Slouching Towards Bethlehem (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1968)

[fyp-philosophy]

Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.

Arthur Schopenhauer, from Parerga and Paralipomena: A Collection of Philosophical Essays (Cosimo Classics, 2007)

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

We mourn places as well as people.

Edward Casey, from Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World (University of Indiana Press, 1993)

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

For too long it was everything and now it must be nothing.

Anna Kamienska, from “Industrious Amazement: A Notebook,” Poetry (1 March 2011)

[quotethat]

Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.

C. S. Lewis, from A Grief Observed (Faber & Faber, 1961)

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

Whatever it was I lost, whatever I wept for Was a wild, gentle thing, the small dark eyes Loving me in secret.

James Wright, “Milkweed,” from The Branch Will Not Break (Wesleyan University Press, 1972)

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

What is lonelier, to grieve or not love anyone enough to?

Alexis Bates (via memoryslandscape)

[dacianamorar]

A single person is missing for you and the whole world is empty

Joan Didion, from The Year of Magical Thinking (Alfred A. Knopf, 2005)

[theblogsta]

Abstract. Depression is a serious illness of which I and other patients should not be ashamed but this is hard to avoid. The stigma of depression is different f

[chocomilksheikh-deactivated2023]

“All too often, when we love somebody, we don’t accept him or her as what the person effectively is. We accept him or her insofar as this person fits the co-ordinates of our fantasy. We misidentify, wrongly identify him or her, which is why, when we discover that we were wrong, love can quickly turn into violence.”

— Slavoj Zizek 

[freelance-philosopher]

The diary taught me that it is in the moments of emotional crisis that human beings reveal themselves most accurately. I learned to choose the heightened moments because they are the moments of revelation. It is the moment when the real self rises to the surface, shatters its false roles, erupts and assumes reality and identity. The fiery moments of passionate experience are the moments of wholeness and totality of the personality.

Anaïs Nin, On Writing (1947)

[theblogsta]

Abuse and neglect negate love. Care and affirmation, the opposite of abuse and humiliation, are the foundation of love. No one can rightfully claim to be loving when behaving abusively. Yet parents do this all the time our culture. Children are told that they are loved even though they are being abused.

Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions 

[theblogsta]

Sever separations in early life leave emotional scars on the brain because they assault the essential human connection: The [parent-child] bond which teaches us that we are lovable. The [parent[child] bond which teaches us how to love. We cannot be whole human beings—indeed, we may find it hard to be human—without the sustenance of this first attachment.

Judith Viorst

[theblogsta]

An individual does not need to be a believer in a religion to embrace the idea that there is an animating principle in the self--a life force (some of us call it soul) that--when nurtured--enhances our capacity to be more fully self-actualized and ble to engage in communion with the world around us.

Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions