The Overwhelming Experience Of Tragedy Is A Disorientation Expressed In One Bewildered And Frequently

in that largeness of heart, that capacity for feeling and desire and passion, there's some kind of holiness.

Niall Williams, History of the Rain

I say we but it's just an illusion that our hearts beat in unison

Wisława Szymborska, We tr. Regina Grol

“I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me. The world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign & re-create myself…” 

One realizes that human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that every ego is half the time greedily seeking them, and half the time pulling away from them.

Willa Cather, Not Under Forty

Fragmentary Face of King Khafre

ca. 2520-2494 BCE | Old Kingdom, Egypt | Egyptian alabaster

A great halo And a tightening in the throat

Dorota Chróścielewska, tr. Regina Grol

'Come close to me, come closer. I promise it will be beautiful.'

Anaïs Nin, Henry and June

I am the fire, says the fire. My body is a graveyard,

says the landscape. You’re welcome, says the landscape.

- Richard Siken, Landscape with Several Small Fires

Violence was all. The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went.

- Virginia Woolf, Orlando

He cried as if crying was a language he alone knew and in it there was something urgent he needed to say.

Niall Williams, History of the Rain