Just After Seven The Rain Began To Fall. Gently At First, A Light Pattering In The Trees, And So Thin

“Just after seven the rain began to fall. Gently at first, a light pattering in the trees, and so thin I could not see it. Then louder and faster, a driving torrent falling slant ways from the slate sky, […]. I left the windows open wide. I stood in front of them and breathed the cold clean air. The rain splashed into my face and on my hands. I could not see beyond the lawns, the falling rain came thick and fast. I heard it sputtering in the gutter-pipes above the window, and splashing on the stones of the terrace. There was no more thunder. The rain smelt of moss and earth and of the black bark of trees.”

— Daphne du Maurier, from “Rebecca”, first published in 1938.

“[…], her eye was brooding but inevitable.”

— D.H. Lawrence, from ‘Women In Love’, first published in 1920.

12 January. “[…] but also partly because of the fear of betraying my self-perception. This fear is justified, for one should permit a self-perception to be established definitively in writing only when it can be done with the greatest completeness, with all the incidental consequences, as well as with entire truthfulness. For if this does not happen - […] - then what is written down will, in accordance with its own purpose and with the superior power of the established, replace what has been felt only vaguely in such a way that the real feeling will disappear while the worthlessness of what has been noted down will be recognized too late.”

Franz Kafka, from a diary entry dated January 12th 1911, featured in ‘Diaries’. (translated by Joseph Kresh)

“And now no sound came from the sea. It breathed softly as if it would draw that tender, joyful beauty into its own bosom.”

— Katherine Mansfield, from ‘At the Bay’, first published in 1922.

Meeting The Man: James Baldwin in Paris

(via Mubi)

“I feel restless and vicious.”

— Franz Kafka, from a diary entry dated October 4th 1911, featured in ‘Diaries’. (translated by Joseph Kresh)