Letter to Evelyn Waugh (1 January 1954)
Context: You have never, I think, known real Grief — panic, melancholia, madness, night-sweats, we've all known for most of our lives — you and me particularly. I'm not sure you know human love in the way I do. You have faith and mysticism — intense inner interests — a diverting, virile mind — gusto for vengeance and destruction if necessary, a fancy — a gospel.
What you can't imagine is a creature with a certain iridescent aura and nothing within but a beating frightened heart built round and for Duff... For two days I am quite alone — in these empty rooms with one thought one prayer — "let it end now" — an absurd feminine desire to die in the same way exactly as Duff. [ I have now a ] fearlessness of death — so let it come now before custom of living disinclines me for dying.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Happiness
“Grief was the celebration of love, those who could feel real grief were lucky to have loved.”
Source: Half of a Yellow Sun
Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"Adúltera" [Adulterous Thoughts] (1883)
Variant: If we'd never met, I think I would have known my life wasn't complete. And I would have wandered the world in search of you, even if I didn't know who I was looking for.
Source: The Longest Ride
Source: Donald Keene's Anthology of Japanese Literature (1955), p. 78
Source: Kenneth Rexroth's translations, Women Poets of Japan (1982), p. 14
Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 126, “Taglios: Royal Return” (p. 720)
