– Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), from a letter to Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), Lake George, New York, dated August 26, 1926, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″
“I wonder if I shall love you as much as face to face as I do in this ‘letter-garb’.”
– Sally Campbell Preston McDowell (1821—1895), from a letter to John Miller (1819—1895), dated July 12, 1855, in: “If You Love That Lady Don’t Marry Her: The Courtship Letters of Sally Mcdowell and John Miller, 1854—1856″
“From me to you nothing should flow. Fly, yes!”
– Marina Tsvetaeva (1892—1941), from a letter to Rainer Maria Rilke (1875—1926), in: “Letters. Summer 1926. Boris Pasternak. Marina Tsvetaeva, Rainer maria Rilke”, translated by Margaret Wettlin, Walter Arndt, Jamey Gambrell
“Darling,
I am just waiting for you to write. But I have heard nothing. Will you please write.”
– Carrie Hughes (1873—1938), from a letter to Langston Hughes (1902—1967), New York, N.Y., dated October 29, 1928, in: “My Dear Boy: Carrie Hughes’s Letters to Langston Hughes, 1926—1938”
“Little One… I try to imagine what you are doing – what is going on in the Room and I just know I can’t – One never can – All I know is that I have a great fondness for you and your understanding my having to do this makes me feel you are again very good to me – ”
– Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), from a letter to Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), Madison, Wisconsin, dated July 22, 1928, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″
“I want your, your news, of you, about your days; I want to see you, to follow you, to feel myself near you!
I picture so many things, I hear your voice, I know every expression of your face, all your gestures and your movements, how you turn your eyes and how you glance as you talk to one person or another; l could tell you everything about yourself, every slightest motion of your soul, every deeply concealed fold of your thought, the whole “momentariness” of life that goes through you without the time to register even in yourself or to appear for one instant in your awareness. But you don’t tell me anything and I don’t know anything. I continue my imagining in emptiness: “will it be so?” or “will it be true?” But I don’t know where you have your breakfast, whether in the hotel or in the store or in some restaurant…
I am no longer able to see you, and you can hardly imagine how much I suffer because of it.”
– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated March 3, 1930, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani
“The writers of the dictionary are foolish enough to try to define love. It can’t be done. The way I feel defies all definition and explanation. When I say I love you, what I feel is, without you, there is nothing. Everything would be a meaningless void. I wish I knew a pretty poem or quotation to close with but I’m at a loss.”
– Mike Royko (1932—1997), from a letter to Carol Joyce Duckman (1934—1979), postmarked August 13, 1954, in: “Royko in Love: Mike’s Letters to Carol”, by Mike Royko and David Royko
“I am truly, without exception, the most ungrateful individual on the face of this earth, and fully deserve whatever torture the Inferno has in store. (I forget what particular form they take.) I’m extremely sorry I didn’t reply at once. I had an incredible amount of work & just cut out writing to anyone.”
– Iris Murdoch (1919—1999), from a letter to Frank Thompson (1918—1989), Oxford, dated early Summer, 1940, in: “Iris Murdoch, a Writer At War. Letters and Diaries, 1939—1945″
“Do you not believe that love like ours is immortal and will only be fully realized in a more beautiful existence adapted to the fine development of what here is called affection? If the world were peopled with inhabitants as nearly perfect as you are, omnipotence would not have inflicted death upon man as a means of refining him for a better existence.”
– Nathaniel Dawson (1829—1895), from a letter to Elodie Todd (1840—1877), Bolivar Heights, dated May 19, 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
“… how secret and dual my life is, how dispersed, how full of contradictions. I have been supremely happy in recent months, yet I despair when I see how impotent this inner state is to influence the outer state.”
– Boris Pasternak (1890—1960), from a letter to Olga Freidenberg (1890—1955), Moscow, dated January 7, 1953, in: “The Correspondence of Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, 1910—1954″, translated from the Russian by Elliott Mossman and Margaret Wettlin
“ – I’m all tired – all over – Tired in my head – all of me – The tired in my head is bad. – ”
– Georgia O’Keeffe (1887—1986), from a letter to Alfred Stieglitz (1864—1946), Canyon, Texas, dated January 14, 1918, in: “My Faraway One. Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz. Volume 1, 1915—1933″
“… the true truth is this: you are my creature, my creature, my creature, in which all my spirit lives with the very power of my creation, so much so that it has become your thing and you are all my life. And the true truth is that I am not old, but young, the youngest of all, in my mind as well as in my heart; in my blood, in my muscles, in my nerves… I am you, as you desire me, and if you do not want me anymore, I – by myself – I am nothing anymore, and living is no longer possible for me.”
– Luigi Pirandello (1867—1936), from a letter to Marta Abba (1900—1988), dated March 1, 1930, in: “Pirandello’s Love Letters to Marta Abba”, translated from the Italian by Benito Ortolani
“My thoughts are with you, you’re fully around me, invisible, necessary as air. You’re mine…
You’re passionate, I too; two fires – what a flame that would be!.. And we should write in blood now!!”
– Leos Janacek (1854—1928), from a letter to Kamila Stosslova (1891—1935), dated May 5, 1927, in: “Intimate Letters: Leoš Janáček to Kamila Janáček”, translated by John Tyrrell
“I keep imagining our reunion and seeing each other again, and then I am as strong as iron, I stretch up tall and say ‘And yet, despite everything, the day of our reunion will come.’ A thousand sweet loving kisses.”
– 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
“I assure you that there is only one pleasure: learning what one does not know, and one happiness: loving the exceptions. Therefore I love you and I embrace you tenderly.”
– George Sand (1804—1876), from a letter to Gustave Flaubert (1821—1880), Nohant, dated May 9, 1867, in: “The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters”, translated from the French by A.L. McKenzie
“Do not