Cuando no tengo rojo, pongo azul.
When I don't have red, I use blue.
— Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973)
Ik maak steeds wat ik nog niet kan om het te leeren kunnen.
I keep making things I can not, to learn how I can.
I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.
— Vincent van Gogh (1853 – 1890)
No greater desire exists than a wounded person's need for another wound.
— Georges Bataille (1897 – 1962)
Achilles, Achilles, just put down the bottle Don’t listen to what you’ve consumed It’s chaos, confusion and wholly unworthy Of feeding and it’s wholly untrue You may feel no purpose nor a point for existing It’s all just conjecture and gloom And there may not be meaning, so find one and seize it Do not waste yourself on this roof
— Gangs of Youth, Achilles Come Down
What a thing, to be both starving and empty. To ache for love — to take the scraps from its table, and yet, run sickly from the feast.
You can't fathom why I'd gobble your kisses but duck your attention, please. Understand — Some of us have gone so long hungry, the idea of being full feels worse than the affliction.
— Ashe Vernon, LOVE DISORDERS AND OTHER OLD HEARTACHES
PYLADES | I'll take care of you. ORESTES | It's rotten work. PYLADES | Not to me. Not if it's you.
— Euripides, from "Orestes", An Oresteia (trans. Anne Carson)
A university degree, four books, and hundreds of articles and I still make mistakes when reading, You write to me "good morning" and I read it as, "I love you".
— Mahmoud Darwish (1941 - 2008)
Finally, in a low whisper, he said, 'I think I might be a terrible person.' For a split second I believed him — I thought he was about to confess a crime, maybe a murder. Then I realized that we all think we might be terrible people. But we only reveal this before asking someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing.
— Miranda July (b. 1974), The First Bad Man (2015)
O resumo da essência do que desejo é só isto: dormir a vida.
— Bernardo Soares (Fernando Pessoa (1888 – 1935)), O Livro do Desassossego (1982)
The essence of what I desire is simply this: to sleep away life.
— Bernardo Soares (Fernando Pessoa (1888 – 1935)), The Book of Disquiet (1982)
E não sei o que sinto, não sei o que quero sentir, não sei o que penso nem o que sou.
— Bernardo Soares (Fernando Pessoa (1888 – 1935)), O Livro do Desassossego (1982)
I don’t know what I feel, I don't know what I want to feel, I don’t know what I think or what I am.
— Bernardo Soares (Fernando Pessoa (1888 – 1935)), The Book of Disquiet (1982)
You are a wonderful creation. You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know.
— Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)
“You’re not a monster,” I said. But I lied. What I really wanted to say was that a monster is not such a terrible thing to be.
— Ocean Vuong (b. 1988), On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (2019)
I tell her how isolated I feel and how lonely I am and hungry and tired and she says ‘oh.’
— James Simon Kunen (b. 1948), The Strawberry Statement (1969)
In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.
— Donna Tartt (b. 1963), The Secret History (1992)
I’m with you. No matter what else you have in your head I’m with you and I love you.
— Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961), The Garden of Eden (1986)
I’m in love with the parts of you that have the power to completely destroy me
— unknown
Não sou nada. Nunca serei nada. Não posso querer ser nada. À parte isso, tenho em mim todos os sonhos do mundo.
I am nothing. I shall never be anything. I cannot wish to be anything. Apart from this, I have within me all the dreams in the world.
— Álvaro de Campos (Fernando Pessoa (1888 – 1935)), Tabacaria
The stars will go out before I forget you.
— Cassandra Clare (b. 1973), Lady Midnight (2016)
I will love you until we run out of mornings. Then I will love you in the dark.
— Unknown source, attributed to Renaud (b. 1952)
But how to explain my obsession with destruction? Not self-immolation but more of a disintegration, slow, like Alka-Seltzer in water. Like sugar in water.
I dissolve.
— Erika Meitner, Big Box Encounter
I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way.
— from Vita Sackville-West to Virgina Woolf, 21 January, 1926
My deplorable mania for analysis exhausts me. I doubt everything, even my doubt.
— Gustave Flaubert (1821 - 1880), from a letter to Louise Colet (1810 - 1876)
The worst thing in the world can happen, but the next day the sun will come up. And you will eat your toast. And you will drink your tea.
— Rhian Ellis, After Life
I’m going to do what I want to do. I’m going to be who I really am. And I’m going to figure out what that is.
— *Stephen Chbosky (b. 1970), The Perks of Being a Wallflower (1999)*