Letters Quotes

Social and cultural history is often comprised of whatever diaries and letters remain and that is down to chance and wide open to interpretation.

Sara Sheridan

Your narrative may fail to grip if you haven't taken any care to find out how well or badly your audience member is faring (or feeling).

Christopher Hitchens

He had never imagined so clearly the consequences of mailing a letter—the impossibility of retrieving it from the iron mouth of the box; the inevitability if its steady progress through the postal system; the passing from bag to bag and postman to postman until a lone man in a van pulls up to the door and pushes a small pile through the letterbox. It seemed suddenly horrible that one's words could not be taken back, one's thoughts allowed none of the remediation of speaking face to face.

Helen Simonson

I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it sho

Blaise Pascal

How are you going do your writings? How can the others understand you through words describing places, sensations, thoughts, feelings, hope, love, separations on a maze of phrases and paragraphs cemented with your ability to 'knit' your story? Maybe, 'how' is more relevant to provide for your readers a consistent path to build a story from the beginning to the end than 'what' and 'why'. Of course, you are not going to dismiss them. These ones – 'what' and 'why' –, they are pretty damn good too.

Frederick Vanderbuilt

It's funny; in this era of e-mail and voice mail and all those things that even I did not grow up with, a plain old paper letter takes on amazing intimacy.

Elizabeth Kostova

it is a marvel that those red-roseleaf lips of yours should be made no less for the madness of music and song than for the madness of kissing.

Oscar Wilde

I’m bored to death. Perhaps I should pillage one of my neighbors for my own amusement. It seems to work for Drowden.

Kristin Cashore

King Drowden has given his men instructions to infiltrate the town, bribe townspeople for the secrets of their neighbors, steal the neighbors’ hidden treasures. Much more subtle than Drowden’s usual smash and burn technique. We do hope Drowden isn’t growing a brain.

Kristin Cashore

Would you please do me the honor of telling me WHAT THE BLAZES IS GOING ON?

Kristin Cashore

As a historical novelist, there is very little I like more than spending time sorting through boxes of old letters, diaries, maps, trinkets, and baubles.

Sara Sheridan

Dashes and disappointments are not canonical Scripture.

Samuel Rutherford

Some people write letters, in the library.

Margaret Atwood

I am in no mood to fulminate on paper--I wish the two of us were in a room together talking of what matters most, the air thick with affinity. In January a man crawls into a cave of hopelessness; he hallucinates sympathies catching fire. Letters are glaciers, null frigates, trapping us where we are in the moment, unable to carry us on toward truth.

Carlene Bauer

Nothing and no one in the world could kill the love I have for you. I have surrendered my whole individuality, the very essence of my being to you. I have given you my body time after time to treat as you pleased. All the hoardings of my imagination I have laid bare to you. There isn't a recess in my brain into which you haven't penetrated. I have clung to you and caressed you and slept with you and I would like to tell the whole world that I clamour for you. You are my lover and I am your mistress, and kingdoms and empires and governments have tottered and succumbed before now to that mighty combination-- the most powerful in the world.

Violet Trefusis

...How I adore you and want you. You can't know how much...I love belonging to you-- I glory in it, that you alone have bent me to your will, shattered my self-possession, robbed me of my mystery, and made me yours, so that away from you I am nothing but a useless puppet, an empty husk.

Violet Trefusis

To be bitter is to attribute intent and personality to the formless, infinite, unchanging and unchangeable void. We drift on a chartless, resistless sea. Let us sing when we can, and forget the rest..

H.P. Lovecraft

I really should be studying now, but you're much more important to me than a .50 calibre machine gun.

Kara Martinelli

If you do not want to write, at least spit on a piece of paper, put it in an envelope, and send it to me. You are not taking any notice of me at all. God forgive you – all I wanted was a few words from you.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

I’ve wanted everything in my life to change for so long, and when it’s finally about to, my urge to escape slows down. I think that’s why people stay unhappy for so long, you know? Miserable or not, it’s easier to stick with what’s familiar. Do you notice that, too? How all of us just want to get through life as quickly and as easily as possible? And even though we know that without risk there’s no reward, we’re still so scared to chance it?

Penelope Douglas

Into each dance must be packed the panic and ecstasy of her last moment of life, for underneath was death.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Dear Beloved woman,Time… so much time has passed since my love wrote his last words for me.And yet I remember it as if it were yesterday. I remember writing back and for the first time since I had left home I told my love what kind of darkness surrounded me here. I forgot all the sweet things my father had said to my mother when he was away. I forgot how they got her through all those long and lonely nights.

Talon P.S.

My dearest Mary,Both my words and my conduct at our last meeting were ungentlemanly - born of haste and high emotion, rather than friendship and good judgement - and yet I cannot find it within me to apologize. I am glad I kissed you; glad to have revelled in your scent, your taste, the touch of your hands; glad, even, to have quarrelled with you because during those moments of anger, I was in your presence.Mary, you are the most singular woman I know: intelligent, brave and honest, and I crave your friendship. I confess to only the haziest notion of what I ask, having never been friends with a woman before. My friendships are male and conventional; pleasant and without distinction. But a friendship with you would be a bright, new, rare thing - if you would do me the honour.I expect that what I ask is impossible. But it is sweet to dream, Mary, and thus I tender one last, insolent, unapologetic request: write to me only if you can say yes.Yours,James

Y.S. Lee

Don't you believe I love you? Don't know how I can make you believe. I didn't want to kiss you goodbye--that was the trouble--I wanted to kiss you goodnight. […] Of course I love you. I love you all the time. […] I'd like to hold you and kiss you so that you wouldn't doubt whether I wanted to or not.

Ernest Hemingway

Eleven pages— this is a letter! Have courage. I'm going to stop.

Jean Webster

I came up with a pen and tablet hoping to write an immortal short story, but I've been having a dreadful time with my heroine— I CAN'T make her behave as I want her to behave; so I've abandoned her for the moment, and am writing to you.

Jean Webster

Postman’s bag is always heavy because it carries the life itself: It carries all the sorrows and all the joys, all the worries and all the hopes!

Mehmet Murat ildan

She is probably by this time as tired of me, as I am of her; but as she is too Polite and I am too civil to say so, our letters are still as frequent and affectionate as ever, and our Attachment as firm and sincere as when it first commenced.

Jane Austen

A love letter lost in the mail, forgotten, miss delivered and then discovered years later and received by the intended is romantic. A love letter ending up in someone's spam filter is just annoying.

B.J. Neblett

And in this moment of pale dawn in the hours before we leave California, I finally realize what has been the hardest thing for me about Matt’s death. It isn’t that I lost a brother, like Frankie, or a son, like Aunt Jayne and Uncle Red. The hardest thing is that I’ll never know exactly what I lost, how much it should hurt, how long I should keep thinking about him. He took that mystery with him when he died, and a hundred thousand one-sided letters in my journal wouldn’t have brought me any closer to the truth than I was the night I pressed my fingers to the sea glass he wore around his neck and kissed him back. For over a year, the letters were my only connection to him; the only evidence that I didn’t imagine our brief time as other. When I first saw my journal helplessly floating on the waves, I felt a loss so immediate and overwhelming it was like being back in the hospital lobby when the doctor told us they couldn’t fix him. One minute, the journal was in my hands, soft and familiar and real; the next minute, it was gone. Just like Matt. And just like Matt, I need to let it go.

Sarah Ockler

You can live to be old or young, but you'll always have moments when you lose your head.

Vincent van Gogh

If you are reading this, I'm dead. Don't celebrate too much. Jesus is watching.

Katie Graykowski

Dearest Jessamin,I have not had a letter from you in a month. (You are a terrible daughter.) I blame the slowness of the boats and hate the distance between us. (How could you leave me?)Your cousin Jacabo responded to my inquiries after your well-being with only the vaguest of terms. (I threatened Jacky Boy if he did not update me on your life.) I take this to mean you have seen him regularly and have also forbidden him from updating me on your life in the big city. (Why are you spending your time with him when he is clearly not running in the right circles?)How are your studies? Have you met anyone interesting? (Why have you not given me news of your father?)I suspect you do not write because you have found someone. (Please, please tell me you have found someone.) I know it. (I beg the spirits for it each night.) A mother can feel these things. (I will drag you back to the island and force you into marriage if you do not take care of it yourself.) Please tell me whether he is of a good family and when I can expect happy tidings to share with my friends. (Do not do anything I cannot crow about to the neighbors.) I knew you would not be on your own for long. (Give me grandchildren. Soon.) Dear Henry has asked after you, though, so if you are lonely you know you have many options here. (I pestered Henry until he finally asked after you and took it as a sign he still wishes to marry you.)Write me soon or I will perish for want of daughterly affection. (You are a terrible daughter.)All my love, (All my love,)Mama

Kiersten White

I’m here for you. Always. Do you feel me?Hear me? I talk to you every night, does it reach you?

Charlotte Eriksson

It's my letter," she began. "I cannot make it right.""Come in, come in," the Prince said gently. "Maybe we can help you." She sat down in the same chair as before. "All right, I'll close my eyes and listen; read to me."" 'Westley, my passion, my sweet, my only, my own. Come back, come back. I shall kill myself otherwise. Yours in torment, Buttercup.' " She looked at Humperdinck. "Well? Do you think I'm throwing myself at him?""It does seem a bit forward," the Prince admitted. "It doesn't leave him a great deal of room to maneuver.

William Goldman

Let your heart dance with pen and paperNow fill the paper with dancing letters.

Debasish Mridha

I have tried to be a man of letters in love with ideas in order to be a wiser and more loving person, hoping to leave the world just a little better than I found it.

Cornel West

I do not think it matters whether one agrees or not as long as ons is forced to think.

Vanessa Bell

I do not think it matters whether one agrees or not as long as one is forced to think.

Vanessa Bell

Why not fall in love with an artist? Otherwise there are no letters, pictures, paintings and songs for you when you wake up.

Darnell Lamont Walker

I read somewhere that dedications are like coded love letters, but I always seem to lay us out bare.Sorry for the poems.

Unknown

Her breast is fit for pearls,But I was not a "Diver" - Her brow is fit for thronesBut I have not a crest,Her heart is fit for home-I- a Sparrow- build thereSweet of twigs and twineMy perennial nest.

Emily Dickinson

During these three months I have gone through much; I mean, I have gone through much in myself; and now there are the things I am going to see and go through. There will be much to be written.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Working for OSHA is a horrible job to have. You have to ignore the whistle blowers and send them illegal letters saying that you cannot find any problems. I have a lot of those fraudulent letters, as I have been through OSHA twice. Once as the utility company employee and once as the utility company subcontractor employee. It is a disgusting & blatently corrupt system.

Steven Magee

I should have written you a letter, it was too late to make the deaths of my brothers an excuse. Since they died, I wrote a book; why not a letter? A mysterious but truthful answer is that while I can gear myself up to do a novel, letters, real-life communications, are too much for me. I used to rattle them off easily enough; why is the challenge of writing to friends and acquaintances too much for me now? Because I have become such a solitary, and not in the Aristotelian sense: not a beast, not a god. Rather, a loner troubled by longings, incapable of finding a suitable language and despairing at the impossibility of composing messages in a playable key--as if I no longer understood the codes used by the estimable people who wanted to hear from me and would have so much to reply if only the impediments were taken away.

Saul Bellow

Love covers all shortcomings and failures, overlooks one's mistakes and does not bring to mind one's past mistakes - My Last Letter, Chapter 1

Santosh Avvannavar

To write is human, to receive a letter: Devine!

Susan Lendroth

...originality is little morethan the fine blending of influences.

Teju Cole

This time, Fusako was able to express herself with fluency and candor. The bold letters she had been writing week after week had granted her an unexpected new freedom.

Yukio Mishima

I've found myself moved by letters and diaries in archives as well as trashy, summer blockbusters. It's possible to make a connection with any kind of writing - as long as the writing is good.

Sara Sheridan

Contradictions, in any communication, are the first stepping stones of mistrust

Paul Babicki

To send a letter is a good way to go somewhere without moving anything but your heart.

Phyllis Theroux

Whoever has no house now, will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone, will sit, read, write long letters through the evening, and wander on the boulevards, up and down, restlessly, while dry leaves are blowing.

Rainer Maria Rilke

A real love letter is made of insight, understanding, and compassion. Otherwise it's not a love letter. A true love letter can produce a transformation in the other person, and therefore in the world. But before it produces a transformation in the other person, it has to produce a transformation within us. Some letters may take the whole of our lifetime to write.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Had I only known my lettersWould be of such importanceI’d empty myself on paperEvery single morning’And it was for such reason,as she read his little stanza,that she decided to stamponefinalletter:‘Every single morningI’d empty myself on paperYou were my greater importanceThat’s why I wrote you letters.

Mie Hansson

Calamity with us, is made an excuse for doing wrong. With them, it is erected into a reason for their doing right. This is really the justice of rich to poor, and I protest against it because it is so.

Charles Dickens

Letters, like compilation tapes, were really vehicles for unexpressed emotions and she was clearly putting far too much time and energy into them.

David Nicholls

My writings are my letters to the universe, who loved me like a mother.

Debasish Mridha

We have had for breakfast, toasts, cakes, a yorkshire pie, a piece of beef about the size and much the shape of my portmanteau, tea, coffee, ham and eggs...

Charles Dickens

But as to your writing me that I don’t love you very much, I don’t know whether you’re saying this in earnest or whether I should realise that you’re joking with me. Still, what you say disturbs me. You are measuring a very healthy expression of a wife’s loyalty by the standard of the insincere flattery of well-worn phrases. But I shall love you, my husband. What does it mean to you that you reassure me with those trivial little compliments? Do you want me to believe that you expect me to comb my hair in a stylish fashion for your homecoming? Or to feign adoring looks with a painted face? Let women without means, who worry and have no confidence in their virtue, flutter their eyelashes and play games to gain favour with their husbands. This is the adulation of a fox and the birdlime of deceitful bird hunting. I don’t want to have to buy you at such a price. I’m not a person who lays more stock in words than duty. I am truly your Laura, whose soul is the same one you in turn had hoped for.

Laura Cereta

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