Quotes from my Blog. Letters

– Grand Duchess Tatyana Nikolaevna (1897—1918), from a letter to her father, Nikolay Alexandrovich (Nikolay II, the last Emperor of all Russia, 1868—1918), dated December 2, 1914

“I think of you as my wife, dear to me as you ever will be, and happy will be the home when you are given to my care and love.”

– Nathaniel Dawson (1829—1895), from a letter to Elodie Todd (1840—1877), Manassas Junction, dated August 1, 1861, in: “Practical Strangers. The Courtship Correspondence of Nathaniel Dawson and Elodie Todd, Sister of Mary Todd Lincoln”, edited by Stephen Berry and Angela Esco Elder

“… and as ever I am turning to you when there is something special on my mind that I cannot quite deal with by myself.”

– Gretel Adorno (1902—1993), from a letter to Walter Benjamin (1892—1940), Berlin, dated January 18, 1937, in: “Gretel Adorno and Walter Benjamin. Correspondence 1930—1940″, translated from the German by Wieland Hoban

“She is very beautiful but looks much worse when, on special occasions, she goes to the hairdresser and comes back vulgarly crimped for two or three days, until the set wears off.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Moscow, dated July 1,1932, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“Whether you wish or not, I have already taken you there inside, where I place everything what I treasure, before I look at it, seeing it already inside.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Anatoly Shteiger, dated July 29, 1936, translated from the Russian by Natalija Arlauskaite, in: “Possession without a touch: letters of Marina Tsvetaeva”

“I was quiet and she could HEAR, she could understand what my silence meant.”

– Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), from a letter to Doris Dana (1920—2006), dated November 30, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena

“… my dear it is a long time now since I heard from you. There is no recent letter for me to set my foot upon as a stepping stone toward you.”

– Iris Murdoch (1919—1999), from a letter to Frank Thompson (1918—1889), dated July 29th, 1943, in: “Iris Murdoch, a Writer at War. Letters and Diaries, 1939—1945″

“I long so desperately for you, so that I would prefer to stay at home all the time like a hermit because nothing makes me happy at the moment and now I will be lucky if I get something from you this week. How long will this situation last?”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated July 18, 1941, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevange

“Marina, my golden Friend, my marvelous, supernaturally fated destiny, my morning mist-on-the-rise soul, Marina.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), dated June 14, 1924, in: “No Love Without Poetry. The Memoirs of Marina Tsvetaeva’s Daughter”, by Ariadna Efron, edited and translated from the Russian by Diane Nemec Ignashev

“There will never be a chair in your life empty of me.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Abram Vishnyak (1895—1943), translated from the Russian by Natalija Arlauskaite, in: “Possession without a touch: letters of Marina Tsvetaeva”

“He is always in my heart. Ah, what one has truly loved, one can never leave.”

– Germaine de Staël (1766—1817), from a letter to Madame Juliette Recamier (1777—1849), Coppet, dated May 1, 1811, in: “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper

“My wish for you is that you should remain at heart just as I remember you many years ago… I am sure that yours will be a bright life after all your trials.”

– Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), from a letter to his brother Nikolay Bulgakov (1989—1966), Moscow, dated July 23, 1929, in: “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis

“When I have no letter, I feel you could be dead, and it is very sad. When I have a letter, I feel you are so living that I become very impatient; I want to see you. So, I have never peace, but why should I? Love is much better than peace.”

– Simone de Beauvoir (1908—1986), from a letter to Nelson Algren (1909—1981), in: “A Transatlantic Love Affair. Letters to Nelson Algren” (https://archive.nytimes.com/)

“I am as weary as a ballerina after five acts and eight tableaux.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to his sister, Maria Chekhova (1863—1957), Moscow, dated January 14, 1891, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“What do I want from you? What I want from all of poetry and from each line of a poem: the truth of this moment. That’s as far as truth goes. Never turns to wood – always to ashes.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), St.-Gilles-sur-Vie, dated August 22, 1926, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“So are you black like a little devil? And should I fear you? Oh no, little soul, I don’t fear you. It’s true you have arms which are strong, but you also have arms which are soft, which embrace. I’d long for the latter; then you’d be defenceless; and what would I do with you? I’d forget all the world – for you’d be the most beautiful world of all. I’d pour out the deepest dark around us – until only our eyes would shine like stars. I wouldn’t want to see anything, only my mouth would kiss your body, my mouth would seek that greatest happiness and would find it. You know, I imagine now that you’re my wife, not a little in that word, as I imagine it: one soul, one body! My dear beloved! – you’re mine and I live in you. It’s impossible to change anything in this. We have our world in which the sun doesn’t set.”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated May 2, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“I do not understand why you call sadness and unhappiness a weakness. Does strength consist in being unable to feel sad?”

– Karolina Pavlova (1807—1893), from a letter to Boris Utin, dated June 30, 1854, in: “Essays on Karolina Pavlova”, edited by Alexander Lehrman and Susanne Fusso

“My tenderness, my happiness, what words can I write for you? How strange that although my life’s work is moving a pen over paper, I don’t know how to tell you how I love, how I desire you. Such agitation – and such divine peace: melting clouds immersed in sunshine – mounds of happiness.”

– Vladimir Nabokov (1899—1977), from a letter to Vera Nabokov (1902—1991), dated June 17, 1926, “Letters to Vera”, edited and translated from the Russian by Olga Voronina and Brian Boyd

“You are the only one in the world who could advise me about ‘me’”

– Kahlil Gibran (1883—1931), from a letter to Mary Elizabeth Haskell (1873—1964), dated August 28, 1924, in: “Beloved prophet; the love letters of Kahlil Gibran and Mary Haskell and her private journal”

“I feel within myself such a turmoil of thoughts and feelings, that anybody – if he could experience it personally for just one moment – would feel himself being swept away into the whirling spiral of a storm and seized by such a fit of dizziness as to go insane from it or even die. I still succeed in resisting, and I keep steady. I’ll keep steady to the last. And if I should die – don’t be afraid – I’ll be able to die, as a person who knew how to suffer so much.”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated February 28, 1930, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“Afterwards, when I read your letter the second time, I understood everything, and was immediately sorry, deeply sorrowed as I read your expressions that were replete with sadness and melancholy, I didn’t expect such a letter. I thought the holidays would bring you a little joy. Tis was my wish that I have hoped for you and always will. I wanted you to be happy even if you missed me, that you would have the best memories possible of Christmas […] so that you would not suffer, but that’s not the way it was for you”

– Antonietta Petris, from a letter to her fiancé, Loris Palma, dated 6 January 1949, in: “Love in the time of migration. Lovers’ Correspondence between Italy and Canada, 1948—1957″ by Sonia Cancian

“How thrilled I always am when I catch sight of the disciplined tumult of your handwriting, those magnificent volutes as of an infinite and pulsating sea from the bosom of which your thought emerges sparkling like Aphrodite, as divine and as beautiful. But when, through some excess of kindness or refinement of graciousness as in your letter of this morning, it literally tortures me by arousing in me gratitude I feel I shall never be capable of expressing, then this joy is painful and mingles: ‘The foam of pleasure with tears of pain’”

– Marcel Proust (1871—1922), from a letter to Anna de Noailles (1876—1933), dated Friday evening, 8 January, 1904, in “Selected Letters, Vol. 2: 1904—1909”, translated from the French by Terence Kilmartin

“You old monkey, how dare you say you will kiss me without my permission as much as you like! I never heard of such impudence before! You better not try it, otherwise my revenge will be most terrible.”

– Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine at birth (the future last Empress of Russia, 1872—1918), from a letter to tsesarevich Nikolay Alexandrovich (the future last Emperor of all Russia, Nikolay II, 1868—1918), dated September 23, 1894

“My thoughts are with you all the time too now, especially when I can gather them together in the evening and at night.”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Karlín, dated January 28, 1942, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevang

“In the thought that I have you, that you’re mine, lies all my joy of life. By it you give me the greatest happiness I’ve ever wished and which I never got and never really wanted from anyone before. I beam with pleasure, where possible I wish and do only good to others. Because you’re in me, because you’ve dominated me completely, I don’t long for anything else. I don’t have words to express my longing for you, to be close to you… it’s hard to calm myself. But the fire that you’ve set alight in me is necessary. Let it bum, let it flame, the desire of having you, of having you!”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated April 30, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“Men always find that the most serious thing of their existence is enjoyment.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated January, 1867, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“Your letter was delightful – red and yellow wine to me…”

– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to Lord Alfred Douglas (1870—1945), Savoy Hotel, London, dated early March, 1893, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters” by Merlin Holland

“Darling extraordinary egocentric impossible… I do love you.”

– Iris Murdoch (1919—1999), from a letter to David Hicks (1929—1998), dated December 4, 1945, in: “Iris Murdoch, a Writer At War. Letters and Diaries, 1939—1945″

“Over the years of my literary work, I have become weary. I have some justification, but no consolation.”

– Mikhail Bulgakov (1891—1940), from a letter to his friend Pavel Popov, Moscow, dated April 14—20, 1932, in: “Manuscripts don’t burn: Mikhail Bulgakov, a life in letters and diaries”, edited by J.A.R.Curtis

“Love lives on words and dies of deeds.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), St. Gilles, dated August 22, 1926, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer Maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“Every year it’s the same thing over and over again…”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko (1858—1943), Melikhovo, dated November 26, 1895, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“I don’t understand why you’re not here sleeping next to me. I don’t know why you’re not with me.”

– Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), from a letter to Doris Dana (1920—2006), dated December 3, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena

“… do you understand why I am suffering so on your account, and what the nature of this suffering is? Even when a person is in love, he is capable of crossing the road and observing his agitation from a distance, but there is something between you and me that makes it impossible for me to leave you and look back.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Moscow, July, dated 23, 1910, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“Darling, I am thinking so much about you. Every time I wake in the night and every hour of the day. Sometimes I am very miserable to think of our being so parted, then comes your dear letter and comforts me.”

– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated February 26, 1935, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson.”

“My last words: stay alive, I don’t need anything else”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), in: “A Russian Psyche: The Poetic Mind Of Marina Tsvetaeva” by Alyssa W. Dinega

“The capacity for taking offense is a quality confined to elevated mind…”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Nikolay Chekhov (1858—1889), Moscow, dated March, 1886, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“Three days ago I was at a Christmas party for the insane, held in the violent ward. Too bad you weren’t there.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Alexander Chekhov (1855—1913), Yalta, dated December 30, 1893, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“… dear soul, let that which secretly binds us never pass away. God, let no-one dare tear it asunder. I’ll guard this secret so that no-one will find it out. After all I won’t harm anyone by loving you so unutterably…

With everyone else I’ve stood as if behind a fence; and when standing with you I want there to be not a hair’s breadth between us. You can have me whole, dear soul, and please give yourself whole to me in the same way.”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated April 30, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“You must know that you do not take me away from anywhere, that I am already taken away from every place in the world and from myself toward a single one, where I never arrive. (What cowardice to tell you this!)”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Abram Vishnyak (1895—1943), from “Florentine nights. Nine Letters With a Tenth Kept Back and an Eleventh Received”, in: “Readings: The Poetics of Blanchot, Joyce, Kafka, Kleist, Lispector, and Tsvetayeva” by H. Cixous, translated from the French by Verena A. Conley

“I will always be a friend of yours, you ought never to doubt that.”

– Germaine de Staël (1766—1817), from a letter to Benjamin Constant (1767—1830), London, dated January 23, 1814, in: “Madame de Staël. Selected correspondence”, translated from the French by Kathleen Jameson-Cemper

“You and I never believed in our meeting here on earth, any more than we believed in life on this earth, isn’t that so?

I kiss you… on the lips? on the temple? on the forehead? Of course on the lips, for real, as if alive.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), the letter she wrote after he died, dated December 31, 1926-February 8, 1927, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer Maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“I’ve been carrying around a pile of letters I wrote to you. It’s a lot of writing, because except for my travel days I write to you every night. I shouldn’t load you down like that, but though I’m thinking about you the entire day, at night my memory of you becomes so intense that I can’t do anything else but write to you. It’s like a compulsion.”

– Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), from a letter to Doris Dana (1920—2006), dated December 5, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena

“Your letter, my dear, was received this morning, and I assure you the expressions of sympathy and love running through its pages but add to the deep love I bear you.”

– Nathaniel Dawson (1829—1895), from a letter to Elodie Todd (1840—1877), Manassas Junction, dated September 2, 1861, in: “Practical Strangers. The Courtship Correspondence of Nathaniel Dawson and Elodie Todd, Sister of Mary Todd Lincoln”, edited by Stephen Berry and Angela Esco Elder

“Treasure, my beloved, you only ever write very little about yourself now. I beg you, write to me about everything, don’t spare me, because I want to be your trusted friend.”

– Marie Bader (1886—1942), from a letter to Ernst Löwy (1880—1943), Prague, dated March 12, 1942, in: “Life and Love in Nazi Prague. Letters from an Occupied City. Marie Bader”, translated by Kate Ottevang

“I want only to have company and I want to have somewhere to go ‘home’ to; and where else but to you can I go ‘home’?”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated March 25, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“… My problem is that I have nothing external; all heart and fate.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Vera Merkurieva (1876—1943), dated August 31, 1940, in “A Captive Lion. The Life Of Marina Tsvetaeva”, by Elaine Feinstein

“Do you ever really miss me dearest one, or do you just think of me as a bit of the past?”

– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated June 18, 1934, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”

“Come back, come back, I cry and cry.

Tell me to come join you and I’ll come…

Where will you go?

What will you do?”

– Arthur Rimbaud (1854—1891), from a letter to his Paul Verlaine (1844—1896), dated July 4, 1873, in: “I Promise to be Good. The Letters of Arthur Rimbaud”, translated from the French by Watt Mason

“Why is it that only my silence means something, and necessarily something bad? But it really doesn’t matter; it always has and always will be this way.”

– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to his Aunt Asya, Moscow, dated January 14, 1936, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“I always like you to write just as you feel. Such letters are pleasant even in their sadness as they convince me of your love and confidence. I love to be sad at times. It is a pleasure to think of sad things. Never let the fear of affecting me control your feelings. I always wish them to be outspoken. I am always candid with you and tell you what I feel and think. Your letters are a comfort and a solace, even one line. If you saw me nightly kissing your miniature, you would know that I was in love. I think last at night and first in the morning of my God and you, my dear…”

– Nathaniel Dawson (1829—1895), from a letter to Elodie Todd (1840—1877), Manassas Junction, dated September 2, 1861, in: “Practical Strangers. The Courtship Correspondence of Nathaniel Dawson and Elodie Todd, Sister of Mary Todd Lincoln”, edited by Stephen Berry and Angela Esco Elder

“What is it to forget a human being? – It is to forget what one suffered through him.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Abram Vishnyak (1895—1943), dated 1922, in: “Florentine nights. Nine Letters With a Tenth Kept Back and an Eleventh Received”, quoted by H. Cixous, in “Readings: The Poetics of Blanchot, Joyce, Kafka, Kleist, Lispector, and Tsvetayeva”, translated from the French by Verena A. Conley

“… I am completely and irrevocably knocked off balance, because I am so tired that my mind and nerves are shattered. I am saying straight forward: I would prefer your society to anyone else’s, if I were at all capable of social intercourse. I can do two things: I can write, in order not to die of hunger, and I can play bridge, in order not to be left with my or others thoughts. …I’m like a victim of shell-shock. To sit in one place for more than an hour is real torture. I, you understand, have become incapable of conversing. If only I could quit the appalling profession of émigré writer, I would again become a human being. But I don’t know how to do anything. … The trouble is that I am flying upside down.”

– Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich (1886—1939), from a letter to his friend, Arkady Tumarkin, dated October 23, 1936, in: “Vladislav Khodasevich in the Emigration: Literature and the Search for Identity” by Pavel Uspenskij, in: The Russian Review. 2018. Vol. 77. No.1. Pp. 88—108.

“I think our life together will be like these last four days – and I do want to marry you – even if you do think I ‘dread’ it – I wish you hadn’t said that – I’m not afraid of anything. To be afraid a person has either to be a coward or very great and big. I am neither. Besides, I know you can take much better care of me than I can, and I’ll always be very, very happy with you – except sometimes when we engage in our weekly debates – and even then I rather enjoy myself. I like being very calm and masterful, while you become emotional and sulky. I don’t care whether you think so or not – I do.”

– Zelda Fitzgerald (1900—1948), from a letter to Francis Scott Fitzgerald (1896—1940), Montgomery, Alabama, dated February, 1920, in: “Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda. The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald”

“But I cannot write further, I must tell you quickly that I love you, that I embrace you affectionately. Give me news of yourself… Enough, I can no more. I love you; don’t have black ideas, and resign yourself to being bored if the air is good there.”

– George Sand (1804—1876), from a letter to Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), Nohant, dated July 8, 1874, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“Somehow I feel that what is ailing me is that as you left that something which was between

us – something really holy – & which gave me strength – was not quite that for you anymore.”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated July 5, 1929, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“It is my best friendship ever; he is the cleverest, the most sociable, the most ancient, the most strange, and the most genius of all people in this world.”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Lyudmila Chirikova (1895—1995), dated April 4, 1923, referring to Prince Sergey Volkonsky (1860—1937), in “Writing as Performance: The case of Marina Tsvetaeva” by Dr. Alexandra Smith

“I don’t need anything anymore when I work: I need only you. If I receive a letter from you today, I will immediately be well. I believe that, even if I should die, if a letter arrived, I would rise from the dead. I am so alone, so alone and you cannot imagine the kind of evenings I spend. As soon as it gets dark, anguish overcomes me …. Write to me! Answer somehow to all the love I have for you…”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated October 11, 1931, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“I miss you as much as ever, but you seem horribly far away and I cannot imagine you getting back or at any rate not the same person.”

– Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), from a letter to Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), dated July, 1934, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson.”

“Beloved, come to me often in my dreams. No, not that. Live in my dreams. Now you have a right to wish and to fulfill your wishes”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), the letter she wrote after he died, dated December 31, 1926-February 8, 1927, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer Maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“Yes, you must be cold.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Alexei Suvorin (1834—1912), dated March, 19, 1892, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“I feel certain that you have already detached yourself from me with your mind and with your heart – and I have become just like anybody else, from whom you are far away and to whom from time to time you give an indifferent thought – then everything dies inside me. I feel my soul and my breath falling apart; every light goes out in my brain, and my hand falls on the paper, motionless as a stone. Help me, help me.”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated October 11, 1931, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“Please write if anything interesting occurs. I am lonesome here, really, and if it were not for letters I might even hang myself, learn to drink the poor Crimean wine or marry an ugly and stupid woman.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Grigori Rossolimo (1860—1928), Yalta, dated October 11, 1899, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“Another gray & threatening morning. – I’m downstairs. It’s seven. – The sleeping potion gave me sleep. – Till six. And then I lay in your bed wondering will a letter come. And what will it bring me. Peace or torture?”

– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated July 5, 1929, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″

“At last I have a moment of quiet and I can write to you. But I have so many things to chat with you about, that I hardly know where to begin…”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated Sunday, January, 1872, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“I am crying, Rainer, you are streaming from my eyes!”

– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), the letter she wrote after he died, dated December 31, 1926-February 8, 1927, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer Maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell

“I wish you were inspired to write to me more often, because the need I always have of your letters, as of air to breathe, at this moment is greater than ever…”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated October 11, 1931, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“I would like to have a talk with you. I am utterly lonely.”

– Anton Chekhov (1860—1904), from a letter to Alexei Suvorin (1834—1912), Melikhovo, dated August 1, 1892, in: “The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov”, translated from the Russian by Sidonie Lederer

“… we love each other on credit and guess more than we know.”

– Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), St. Petersburg, dated July 12, 1910, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin

“What a foolish life I have been leading for two and a half months! How is it that I have not croaked with it? My longest nights have not been over five hours. What running about! What letters! and what anger! – repressed – unfortunately! At last, for three days I have slept all I wanted to, and I am stupefied by it.”

– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated Sunday, January, 1872, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie

“Sometimes I think that the artistic life is a long and lovely suicide, and am not sorry that it is so.”

– Oscar Wilde (1854—1900), from a letter to H. C. Marillier, dated December 12, 1885, in: “Oscar Wilde: A Life In Letters”

“You’ve been sparing with words. What’s the matter with you again?”

– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated March 27, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell

“For the love of God, please write! It’s all I have left…”

– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated February 27, 1930, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani

“She was very kind to me, she was…”

– John Miller (1819—1895), from a letter to Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821—1895), Philadelphia, dated October 24, 1854, in: “If You Love That Lady Don’t Marry Her: The Courtship Letters of Sally Mcdowell and John Miller, 1854—1856″

“Sweetheart, please dont worry about me – I want to always be a help – You know I am all yours and love you with all my heart.”