Nikos Kazantzakis, From A Letter Featured In The Selected Letters Of Nikos Kazantzakis

Katherine Mansfield, from a letter to John Murry, featured in The Letters of John Middleton Murry and Katherine Mansfield

I woke up from a nightmare, but it still seemed better than reality.

You didn't even ask how I was. You nuked me with emotions that targetted even my hidden bunkers of peace that previously suffered a quake not hours before. You chose the right time for war. Now who will ask how I am?

— Louise Glück, "The Burning Heart"

Each cut of fiber on my skin should represent the things I deserved. The pain I deserve. If I counted all, I may not be breathing by dawn.

18 April, 1939 Letters to Véra by Vladimir Nabokov

— roach-works

Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, Vladimir Nabokov