Dum Pudeo Pereo (as I Blush, I Die) Says An Old Love Song. Blood Rushes To The Face, At The Same Time

From the very beginning, and throughout the whole of our affair, I had the privilege of knowing what we all find out in the end: the man we love is a complete stranger.

Annie Ernaux, Simple Passion

'I'll go.' But he doesn't go. He uses the future not the present tense

Niall Williams, History of the Rain

Despair recognizes its own ridiculousness

- Heather Christle, The Crying Book

Much has been said and written about the ‘haiku moment’ - that it blurs the distinction between ‘subject’ and ‘object’, ‘self’ and ‘other’; that in it the perception of the essential and accidental, of the beautiful and the ugly, disappears; that it reflects things are they are in themselves.

- Yoel Hoffman, Japanese Death Poems

By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. ‘Tis waking that kills us.

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me. The world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign & re-create myself…” 

Someone was and was here and then suddenly disappeared and is stubbornly gone.

Wisława Szymborska, A Cat in an Empty Apartment tr. Regina Grol

Truth. What ferocity in your quest for it. You destroy and you suffer. In some strange way I am not with you, I am against you. We are destined to hold two truths. I love you and I fight you. And you, the same. We will be stronger for it, each of us, stronger with our love and our hate. When you caricature and nail down and tear apart, I hate you. I want to answer you, not with weak or stupid poetry but with a wonder as strong as your reality.

Anaïs Nin, Henry and June

A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token.

Mark Rothko, Statement