1. Clarice Lispector | 2. Egon Schiele | 3. Dylan Thomas | 4. Joseph Lorusso | 5. Jenny Slate | 6. Ron

1. Clarice Lispector | 2. Egon Schiele | 3. Dylan Thomas | 4. Joseph Lorusso | 5. Jenny Slate | 6. Ron Hicks | 7. Mary Oliver | 8. Safet Zec | 9. Madeline Miller | 10. Antonio Piatti | 11. Ocean Vuong | 12. Peter Wever | 13. Richard Siken

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.

Arundhati Roy

conditions of love: the philosophy of intimacy

“Sometimes, when I’m careless, I think survival is easy: you just keep moving forward with what you have, or what’s left of what you were given, until something changes—or you realize, at last, that you can change without disappearing, that all you had to do was wait until the storm passes you over and you find that—yes—your name is still attached to a living being.”

— Ocean Vuong, from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

early loves, a primer 💌

“In that book which is my memory, On the first page of the chapter that is the day when I first met you, Appear the words, ‘Here begins a new life’.”

— Dante Alighieri, La Vita Nouva

“When I first met you, that’s what I remember. I looked up at the sky and thought, I’m going to love this person because even the sky looks different.”

— Margaret Stohl, Beautiful Chaos

“We talked as if we had parted only the day before, as if we had known each other for many years.”

— Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

— The Beatles, “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”

“Just by existing and by letting me speak to you, you give me an immense amount. You are infinitely rich where I am concerned; entirely clear and captivating. I love you extremely and how it eases my heart to be able to say so.”

— Iris Murdoch, in a letter to Michael Oakeshott

“I feel met by you, he says afterwards. It’s weird. (That’s exactly what it feels like. I felt met by him the first time I saw him. I felt met by him all the times we weren’t even able to meet each other’s eyes.)” 

— Ali Smith, Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis)

“How can I explain to you, my happiness, my golden, wonderful happiness, how much I am all yours–with all my memories, poems, outbursts, inner whirlwinds? Or explain that I cannot write a word without hearing how you will pronounce it–and can’t recall a single trifle I’ve lived through without regret–so sharp!–that we haven’t lived through it together–whether it’s the most, the most personal, intransmissable–or only some sunset or other at the bend of a road–you see what I mean, my happiness?”

— Vladimir Nabokov, letter to his wife Véra

— Benjamine Alire Saenz, Aristotle and dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“I cannot write about Damascus, without the jasmine climbing on my fingers. / I cannot say Her name, without my mouth getting overcrowded with apricot juice, blackberries and quince.”

— Nizar Qabbani, A Green Lantern on Damascus’ Door

“I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin, A Wizard of Earthsea

“Yes, I need you, my fairy-tale. Because you are the only person I can talk with about the shade of a cloud, about the song of a thought–and about how, when I went out to work today and looked a tall sunflower in the face, it smiled at me with all of its seeds.”

— Vladimir Nabokov, letter to his wife Véra 

— Lorde, “400 Lux”

“You know, when I start telling you something by saying, ‘I was thinking about what you said about … ,’ it always gives me pleasure to say that, to let you know that I was brooding on your words. And I think the pleasure is … well, I know how much I love it when you say ‘I was thinking about what you said about …’ It’s somehow as though the part of you that’s in me will be able to nourish the part of me that’s in you, or-something-I don’t know how to put it. But that there’s some circuit of reciprocity between these holding relations: your ability to hold me inside you, and mine to hold you inside me.”

— Eve Sedgwick, A Dialogue on Love

“There wasn’t anything mean about him. I don’t understand how you could live in a mean world and not have any of that meanness rub off on you. How could a guy live without some meanness?”

— Benjamine Alire Saenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

— Ali Smith, Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis

“Do you remember a night when I came along the dark passage to your room in a thunderstorm and we lay talking about whether we were afraid of death or not? That is the sort of occasion on which the things I want to say to you,–and to you only,–get said.”

— Virginia Woolf, in a letter to Vita Sackville-West

“Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it.”

— Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“I saw her smile so close to my eyes that there was nothing but to see but the smile, and the thought came into my head that I’d never been inside a smile before, who’d have thought being inside a smile would be so ancient and so modern both at once?”

— Ali Smith, Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis

— Laura Marris, “Tell Me Gently”

“The thing is, Iphis and Ianthe  had actually, for real, very really, fallen in love. Did their hearts hurt? I said. Did they feel like they were underwater all the time? Did they feel scoured by light? Did they wander about not knowing what to do with themselves? Yes, Robin said. All of that. And more.”

— Ali Smith, Girl Meets Boy: The Myth of Iphis

“You are all the colours in one, at full brightness.”

— Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places

“Arwen: Do you remember when we first met? Aragorn: I thought I had wandered into a dream.”

— Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

— Labi Siffre, “Bless the Telephone”

“This hour I tell things in confidence, / I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.”

— Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

”When I am with you, there is nowhere else I’d rather be. And I am a person who always wants to be somewhere else.”

— David Levithan, How They Met, and Other Stories

“[Bridge:] But we’re both a long way from home We got the windows down, the radio’s on, always [Verse 2:] I wrote a letter to the sky saying maybe one day you’ll get to kiss me, kiss me, kiss me. My girl found it in the car and said baby why you trying to diss me, diss me, diss me? Cause you know you’re my baby, you know you’re my baby, ooh I’m not just in it for the pride, in it for the ride, yeah…”

— Frank Ocean, “Acura Integurl”

— Cat Power, “Sea of Love”

Our Experience of Grief is Unique as a Fingerprint