Belles-Lettres

I live, I die,. I burn myself and drown. I am extremely hot in suffering cold: my life is soft and hardness uncontrolled. When I am happy, then I ache and frown. Suddenly I am laughing while I cry and in my pleasure I endure deep grief: my joy remains and slips out like a thief. Suddenly I am blooming and turn dry. So Love inconstantly leads me in vain and when I think my sorrow has no end unthinkingly I find I have no pain. But when it seems that joy is in my reign and an ecstatic hour is mine to spend, He comes and I, in ancient grief, descend.

I recollect that wondrous meeting, That instant I encountered you, When like an apparition fleeting, Like beauty's spirit, past you flew. Long since, when hopeless grief distressed me, When noise and turmoil vexed, it seemed Your voice still tenderly caressed me, Your dear face sought me as I dreamed. Years passed; their stormy gusts confounded And swept away old dreams apace. I had forgotten how you sounded, Forgot the heaven of your face. In exiled gloom and isolation My quiet days meandered on, The thrill of awe and inspiration, And life, and tears, and love, were gone. My soul awoke from inanition, And I encountered you anew, And like a fleeting apparition, Like beauty's spirit, past you flew. My pulses bound in exaltation, And in my heart once more unfold The sense of aw and inspiration, The life, the tears, the love of old.

What did we say to each other that now we are as the deer who walk in single file with heads high with ears forward with eyes watchful with hooves always placed on firm ground in whose limbs there is latent flight.

It was a productive pain. If happiness is anticipation with certainty, we were happy. The desirability that escaped me. What experience would you like on Christmas? over What gift would you like on Christmas? Pain was not only endurable, it was sweet. It would involve, I supposed, "my man," who before leaving, would love me. "How do you do that? I mean, how would you get someone to love you?" Dealing with it each according to his way. The muted sound of flesh on unsurprised flesh. To have something as wonderful as that to happen would take a long, long time. She would see only what there was to see: the eyes of other people. Don't worry about my bandy legs. That's the 1st thing they push aside. She was cut out for better things and could make the right man happy. Eyes that questioned nothing and asked everything. He was a simple Presence, an all embracing tenderness with strength and promise of rest. Having a baby is more than a bowel movement. Her process o...

Future is a trap set right in the middle of your brain. It's hard to deny life's little ironies. You have no immunity against life. Love was a miracle the flesh could not copy. Being bored is when you haven't anything to do, so what would you be doing? Intelligence is a gift and madness is an instinct. A genius can get into a worse mess than an idiot. The deeper the love, the sharper the flesh aches. Romantic dreams leave no trace. Erring in ones choice of boyfriend is a woman's great humiliation. One draws near in order to separate in the end. How blessed a woman like me should feel: young, good looking, smart and a professional. Shadows float about recording thousands of shapes and hopeless situations. When bad things happen to you, everything goes haywire. You need not worry. When you wake up, tomorrow is the day after the one before. He was the fire of my life and the impetus behind my work, he was inexpressible sweetness and pain perfectly beautiful rose resurrecte...

The profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on non-existence of return. We live everything as it comes without warning. What happens but once might as well not happen at all. The only relationship that can make both partners happy is in which sentimentality has no place and neither partner makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation but in the desire for shared sleep. Those years were more attractive in retrospect. He was enjoying the sweet lightness of being. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination. Only necessity is heavy and only what is heavy has value. Life cannot be an experiment thus there's no room for hypothesis. Co-incidence means that two events unexpectedly happen at the same time, they meet. Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times ...

She doesn't want to write a book that a reader wont understand and would feel ashamed for not understanding. Making each sentence serve her and not the other way around. When she lived at home, the things she looked at scolded her and made her feel sad and depressed. They said, "Wash me." They said, "Wash me." They said, "Lazy." They said, "You ought." You can never have too much of sky. A home in a heart, a house made of heart. "...who left and keeps leaving." I am the one nobody comes for. I have began my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate.