Clarice Lispector, Tr. By Johnny Lorenz, Um Sopro De Vida

“It isn’t necessary that you leave home. Sit at your desk and listen. Don’t even listen, just wait. Don’t wait, be still and alone. The whole world will offer itself to you.”

— Franz Kafka, The Zürau Aphorisms

Anaïs Nin, from “The diary of Anaïs Nin, vol. 3: 1939-1944”

“What is bad for the heart is good for the art. The terrible irony of our lives as artists.”

— Jandy Nelson

Novalis, Heinrich von Ofterdingen: A Romance [originally published 1802]

Kim Addonizio, from "'Round Midnight'", What Is This Thing Called Love

“If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.”

— Lao Tzu 

Fyodor Dostoevsky, from The Idiot

T. S. Eliot — The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

“He does not know how to love anyone but himself, and when he wants to love others he always has first to transform them into himself. In that he is ingenious.”

—Daybreak, §412 (edited).

“But deep inside her she never forgets.”

— Albert Camus, Notebooks (1951-1959)