“Anaïs Nin: she is very startling — pixie-like, other-worldly — small, finely-built, dark hair, and much make-up which made her look very pale — large, questioning eyes — a marked accent which I could not label — her speech is over-precise — she shines and polishes each syllable with the very tip of her tongue and teeth — one feels that if one were to touch her, she would crumble into silver dust.”— Susan Sontag, from Reborn: “April 8th, 1949”
“Nature and art are in this way twins: they are both beautiful, and dreadful, and in love with change.”— Mary Oliver, from Winter Hours: Prose, Prose-Poems, And Poems; “Winter Hours,”
“The look—more intimate (committing) than the sexual embrace, because there is no room for detachment in it…”— Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963
“Nothing is more punitive than to give a disease a meaning—that meaning being invariably a moralistic one.”— Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“Rome, did you suffer a fire like mine? روما هل قاسيتي حريقا مثل حريقي”— Mahmoud Darwish
“This solitude is my home.”— Rosalía de Castro, tr. by Kate Flores from “Now All That Sound of Laughter,”
We don’t have lovers, we take hostages.
Excerpt From: Susan Sontag. “Reborn.”
(via teacoffeebooks)
“Out of jasmine the night’s blood streams white. Your perfume, my weakness and your secret, follows me like a snakebite”— Mahmoud Darwish
