Franz Kafka, from a letter to Felice Bauer written in 1912, featured in Letters To Felice
James Baldwin.
Simone de Beauvoir, from Diary of a Philosophy Student: Volume 1, 1926-27
Text ID: I myself keep my emptiness inside of me, and this certainty that I am alone, that nothing can satisfy me, that my happiness will have to be willed so strongly, so severely that it will be more of a fatigue than a peace.
“And so I ask myself: 'Where are your dreams?' And I shake my head and mutter: 'How the years go by!' And I ask myself again: 'What have you done with those years? Where have you buried your best moments? Have you really lived? Look,' I say to myself, 'how cold it is becoming all over the world!' And more years will pass and behind them will creep grim isolation. Tottering senility will come hobbling, leaning on a crutch, and behind these will come unrelieved boredom and despair. The world of fancies will fade, dreams will wilt and die and fall like autumn leaves from the trees. . . .” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights
Kim Addonizio, “The Singing”, Tell Me
Forget everything. Open the windows. Clear the room. The wind blows through it. You see only its emptiness, you search in every corner and don't find yourself.
— Franz Kafka, Diaries 1914-1923
May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude
poetry is wild because in any given collection 30% of it will make you feel nothing, 60% will make you feel varying levels of confused and curious, and the other 10% will crack open your brain like an egg and reveal new truths about the human condition
just saw this on pinterest and it hit me like a truck