bobdylam

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…I was more afraid and more alone than ever,

Liv Ullmann, from Changing 

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Katherine Mansfield, from Journal of Katherine Mansfield.

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Where do you see yourself in the future, as a singer or a writer?

“I see myself sleeping in the future.”

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Even among the living, sometimes it seems a night will never end.

Anne Carson, from To Samos, Plainwater: Essays and Poetry.

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Everyone wants an answer. I think it was Gertrude Stein who wrote, "There is no answer, there never was an answer, there'll never be an answer. That's the answer." It's a hard sell, but that's the ultimate truth.

Harry Dean Stanton, from an interview with Esquire

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The only fear I have is how long consciousness is gonna hang on after my body goes. I just hope there's nothing. Like there was before I was born. (...) The void, the concept of nothingness, is terrifying to most people on the planet. And I get anxiety attacks myself. I know the fear of that void. You have to learn to die before you die. You give up, surrender to the void, to nothingness.

Harry Dean Stanton, from an interview with Esquire

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I have calmed down; I lay in the woods with a headache and kept turning my head in the grass with the pain; today it is better, but my self-control is no greater than it was before; when dealing with myself I am powerless.

Franz Kafka, from a letter to Felice Bauer written c. September 1913 

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I do nothing but search and not find. That’s how I waste my nights.

Alejandra Pizarnik, from “01 May 1972,” of Uncollected Poems  (1962-1972), Selected Poems, transl. by Cecilia Rossi (Waterloo Press, 2010)

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…I feel an increasing sense of devastation, both in my intellect and in the center of my heart,…

Simone Weil, from a letter to Maurice Schumann written c. January 1942 

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...I don't think any woman can feel as inferior and sad as I have felt... I have humiliated myself, been bitter, mean, mad, but I can never get away from what fate has decided for me. I seem empty of everything... I have no wish, no particular longing... But I am so ungrateful.

Greta Garbo, in a letter to Mimi Pollack

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At this moment I do not believe in anything and I have no hope. All forms and expressions that give life its charm seem to me meaningless. I have no feeling either for the future or the past, while the present seems to me poison.

Emil Cioran, On the Heights of Despair

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I am imprisoned by devotion. I shy away from people. I am alone. I fall into obsession.

Anaïs Nin, from a diary entry featured in Mirages: The Unexpurgated Diary; 1939-1947

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I am so tired, so tired... I am so fed up with everything and so afraid because I am not old enough for all of this. I have also been very stupid.

Greta Garbo, in a letter to Mimi Pollack, 1962

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… I’ll never be quite whole again.

— Katherine Mansfield, in a letter to J. M. Murry, featured in Letters and Journals of Katherine Mansfield

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Being noticed can be a burden. Jesus got himself crucified because he got himself noticed. So I disappear a lot.

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You suffocate me. I want to heal your wound. Impossible. It will never close.

Violette Leduc, tr. by Derek Coltman, from “La Bâtarde,”

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I spend my days trying to trick my anxiety and to avoid horrifying myself.

Clarice Lispector, “Letter to Fernando Sabino featured in Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector”