A Writer's Ruminations

"It is sometimes so bitterly cold in the winter that one says, `The cold is too awful for me to care whether summer is coming or not; the harm outdoes the good.’ But with or without our approval, the severe weather does come to an end eventually and one fine morning the wind changes and there is the thaw. When I compare the state of the weather to our state of mind and our circumstances, subject to change and fluctuation like the weather, then I still have some hope that things may get better."

— Vincent van Gogh, from a letter to Theo van Gogh in August 1879

"I sincerely hope I’ll never fathom you. You’re mystical, serene, intriguing; you enclose such charm within you. The lustre of your presence bewitches me. I like the unreality of your mind; the whole thing is very splendid and voluptuous and absurd. It is not mere words on paper, Mrs. Nicholson, it is both my mind and heart addressing you."

— Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Vita Sackville-West dated 27 May 1927 (via violentwavesofemotion)

"God forbid that another should ever live the life I have known here and yet there are moments you know, old Boy, when after a dark day there comes a sunset—such a glowing gorgeous marvelous sky that one forgets all in the beauty of it—these are the moments when I am really writing—Whatever happens I have had these blissful, perfect moments and they are worth living for."

— Katherine Mansfield, from a letter to Richard Murry, January 1920 (via katherine-mansfield)

"

You were gone now - I scarcely remember you that summer. You were simply one of the beings who disliked me or were indifferent to me. I didn’t like to think of you. You didn’t need me and it was easier to talk to or rather at Madame Bellois and keep full of wine. I was grateful when you came with me to the Doctors one afternoon but after we’d been a week in Paris and I didn’t try any more about living or dieing.

Things were always the same. The apartments that were rotten, the maids that stank - the ballet before my eyes, spoiling a story to take the Troubetskoys to dinner, poisoning a trip to Africa. You were going crazy and calling it genius - I was going to ruin and calling it anything that came to hand. And I think everyone far away enough to see us outside of our glib presentations of ourselves guessed at your almost megalomaniacal selfishness and my insane indulgence in drink.

—

F. Scott Fitzgerald, in a letter to his wife Zelda, 1930

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