– Etty Hillesum (1914—1943), from a letter to Osias Kormann, dated 1943, from a Westerbork transitional camp for Jews, in: “An Interrupted Life: Diaries and Letters 1941—43. And Letters from Westerbork″
“My dear Darling,
I don’t know what to call you. I am tired of Madam; & “my dear Friend” would sound very sweetly in some cases, but very unmeaningly toward you. Do tell me what I shall say; or else encourage a poor suffering lover, who has brought away from all his visits to you new arrows of uneasiness & distress, to call you what he pleases, as it is only one more way of candidly telling you the truth.”
– John Miller (1819—1895), from a letter to Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821—1895), Philadelphia, dated January 20, 1855, in: “If You Love That Lady Don’t Marry Her: The Courtship Letters of Sally Mcdowell and John Miller, 1854—1856″
“You’re in my blood. I can’t do anything without you because you live inside me.”
– Doris Dana (1920—2006), from a letter to Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), dated April 22, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena
“I do not write to you and you do not write to me, and time is passing. And rather swiftly. But it is not in my power to change anything.”
– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), in a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Moscow, dated April 3, 1935, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin
“I have wanted for several days to write you a long letter in which I should tell you all that I have felt for a month. It is funny. I have passed through different and strange states. But I have neither the time nor the repose of mind to gather myself together enough.”
– Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), from a letter to George Sand (1804—1876), dated October, 1869, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie
“I thought about how much I would want for us to die together… With one condition: to be in the same coffin. Of course, you would have to approve of giving up silence forever… I would have so much to say to you, so many things…”
– Emil Cioran (1911—1995), from a letter to Friedgard Thoma, quoted in her autobiography “Um nichts in der Welt”, translated from the Romanian translation by Christina Tudor-Sideri
“Do you know what I want – when I want? Darkness, light, transfiguration. The most remote headland of another’s soul – and my own. Words that one will never hear or speak. The improbable. The miraculous. A miracle.
You will get, Boris (for in the end you will surely get me), a strange, sad, dreaming, singing little monster struggling to escape from your hand.”
– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), dated July 26, 1926, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer Maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell
“Dearest I think of you all the time and wish to share all my impressions and moods with you.”
– Bronislaw Malinowski (1884—1942), from a letter to Elsie Rosaline Masson (1890—1935), in flight on Imperial Airways. Flying boat “Scipio’. Between Brindisi and Athens, dated May 25, 1934, in: “The Story of a Marriage. The Letters of Bronislaw Malinowski and Elsie Masson”.
“God knows, I would not have hesitated for a moment to precede or follow you into the fires of hell, if you had given the word. For my heart is not mine but yours.”
– Héloïse d’Argenteuil (1101? —1163/4?), from a letter to Pierre Abelard (1079—1142), in: “The Letters of Heloise and Abelard. A translation of their correspondence and related writings”, translated from the French by Mary Martin McLaughlin with Bonnie Wheeler
“So, Rainer, it’s over. I don’t want to go to you. I don’t wish to want to.”
– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), dated June 3, 1926, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell
“How I love you… How pliant you are, like a stem; lips parting, speaking malicious and destructive words. I, a pliant fatality, isn’t that so? Dear hands, hands from which to drink love. You are entirely like that, something from which to drink love. And I drink, having forgotten everything.”
– Nikolay Punin (1888—1953), from a letter to Anna Akhmatova (1889—1966), dated October 19, 1922 and the diary note of November 2, 1922, in: “The Unsung Hero of the Russian Avant-Garde: The Life and Times of Nikolay Punin” by Natalia Murray
“You’re sweet – I’d like to kiss you wherever you’d like to be kissed most – just now – That’s probably not at all – or all over. – ”
– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated September 14, 1926, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″
“Now it is over. It doesn’t take me long to be done with wanting.”
– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), dated June 3, 1926, in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell
“My friend – my friend, I am not well – a deadly weight of sorrow lies heavily on my heart. I am again tossed on the troubled billows of life; and obliged to cope with difficulties, without being buoyed up by the hopes that alone render them bearable. ‘How flat, dull, and unprofitable,’ appears to me all the bustle into which I see people here so eagerly enter! I long every night to go to bed, to hide my melancholy face in my pillow; but there is a canker-worm in my bosom that never sleeps.”
– Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 -1797), from a letter to Gilbert Imlay (1754 -1828), Gothenburg, dated June 29, 1795, in: “The Love Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft to Gilbert Imlay”
“The fate of our letters is an odd one: we write but don’t send them off.”
– 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
“My love, I don’t know how to answer your questions about where we could go. What I want most is your happiness!”
– Doris Dana (1920—2006), from a letter to Gabriela Mistral (1889—1957), dated April 22, 1949, in: “Gabriela Mistral’s Letters to Doris Dana”, translated by Velma Garcia-Gorena
“I don’t know where to begin – so I’ll begin where I shall end – with my love for you…”
– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to her husband, Sergey Efron (1893—1941), she had heard nothing since the Summer of 1919, dated July, 1921, in: “Marina Tsvetaeva. A Life In Poems” by Rolf Gross
“What can I tell you? Where shall I begin? There