“I Bloom Within Myself, Inwardly,”

April 13, 1913 Letters to Felice by Franz Kafka First published : 1973

“What is bad for the heart is good for the art. The terrible irony of our lives as artists.”

— Jandy Nelson

“I wore my fairy dress of tulle and danced until midnight.”

— Anais Nin

David Lynch & Mark Frost, Twin Peaks

“Everybody knows that really intimate conversation can only take place between two or three. Even if there are only six or seven present, collective language begins to dominate.”

— Simone Weil, Waiting on God

“He does not know how to love anyone but himself, and when he wants to love others he always has first to transform them into himself. In that he is ingenious.”

—Daybreak, §412 (edited).

“—I want to change: I want to stop fear’s subtle / guidance of my life—”

— Frank Bidart, from Half-light: Collected Poems; “California Plush”

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

if not, winter, sappho (tr. anne carson)