Nothing compares to your hands, nothing like the green-gold of your eyes. My body is filled with you for days and days. You are the mirror of the night. The violent flash of lightening. The dampness of the earth. The hollow of your armpits is my shelter. My fingertips touch your blood. All my joy is to feel like spring from your flower-fountain that mine keeps to fill all the paths of my nerves which are yours.

I sleep with thee, and wake with thee,
And yet thou art not there;
I fill my arms with thoughts of thee,
And press the common air.

Fall in love. If you don’t love, it’s all dead! Fall in love and everything will come to life. Squander your joy, dissipate your cheerfulness, be sad and silent with enthusiasm, hurl your happiness into people’s faces.

If flowers can grow
through blankets of melting snow,
there is hope for me.

Natures of your kind, with strong, delicate senses, the soul-oriented, the dreamers, poets, lovers are always superior to us creatures of the mind. You take your being from your mothers. You live fully; you were endowed with the strength of love, the ability to feel. Whereas we creatures of reason, we don’t live fully; we live in an arid land, even though we often seem to guide and rule you. Yours is the plentitude of life, the sap of the fruit, the garden of passion, the beautiful landscape of art. Your home is the earth; ours is the world of ideas. You are in danger of drowning in the world of the senses; ours is the danger of suffocating in an airless void. You are an artist; I am a thinker. You sleep at your mother’s breast; I wake in the desert. For me the sun shines; for you the moon and the stars.

So with a savage and joyful howl she entered into the company of
wolves, like one who after long search has found her rightful kin,
and the others, howling in chorus, did welcome her as their sister.

The little girl’s sense of secrecy that developed at prepuberty only grows in importance. She closes herself up in fierce solitude: she refuses to reveal to those around her the hidden self that she considers to be her real self and that is in fact an imaginary character: she plays at being a dancer like Tolstoy’s Natasha, or a saint like Marie Leneru, or simply the singular wonder that is herself. There is still an enormous difference between this heroine and the objective face that her parents and friends recognise in her. She is also convinced that she is misunderstood: her relationship with herself becomes even more passionate: she becomes intoxicated with her isolation, feels different, superior, exceptional: she promises that the future will take revenge on the mediocrity of her present life. From this narrow and petty existence she escapes by dreams. She has always loved to dream: she gives herself up to this penchant more than ever; she uses poetic clichés to mask a universe that intimidates her, she sanctifies the male sex with moonlight, rose-coloured clouds, velvet night; she turns her body into a marble, jasper or mother-of-pearl temple; she tells herself foolish fairy tales. She sinks so often into such nonsense because she has no grasp on the world; if she had to act, she would be forced to see clearly, whereas she can wait in the fog.

He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk: I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine.

I want to lie down like a tired child and weep away this life and my diary shall receive me on its downy pillow. Most children do not know what they cry for; nor do I, altogether.

You never saw it, but there’s a garden inside me.

So the week slips or sticks through my fingers; rage, misery, joy, dulness, elation mix; I am the usual battlefield of emotions.

She did not need much, wanted very little. A kind word, sincerity, fresh air, clean water, a garden, kisses, books to read, sheltering arms, a cosy bed, and to love and be loved in return.

Sometimes at night I would sleep open-eyed underneath a sky dripping with stars. I was alive then.

Lie on the bridge and watch the water flowing past. Or run, or wade through the swamp in your red boots. Or roll yourself up and listen to the rain falling on the roof. It’s very easy to enjoy yourself.

Faerie contains many things besides elves and fays, and besides dwarfs, witches, trolls, giants, or dragons: it holds the seas, the sun, the moon, the sky; and the earth, and all things that are in it: tree and bird, water and stone, wine and bread, and ourselves, mortal men, when we are enchanted.