My darling, you do whatever you think, and I’ll be there come hell, high water, or the complete force of Pinkerton’s detectives.

Even if when I met you I had not happened to like you, I should still have been bound to change my attitude, because when you meet anyone in the flesh you realize immediately that he is a human being and not a sort of caricature embodying certain ideas.

Here, Jean Rhys writes to friend Peggy Kirkaldy about the growing legal troubles of her third husband, Max Hamer. Hamer would soon be convicted of fraud and sent to prison. Monday [1950]Stanhope Gardens Peggy my dear,  Max’s case comes on … Continued

If one were to write of pale lavender clouds in a pale green sky, people would say one was drunk or imitating Conrad Aiken, and yet I have seen this here. Curses be.

Even on your own free time you cannot manage to think the thoughts you want to, and escape from the army for a while. Everywhere you look you see barracks, jeeps, rifles, soldiers, insignias and everything that pertains to the army. You can’t get away from it. It’s like a horrible obsession.

Civilization is all right, but I prefer to be one of its discontents. Except that’s getting to be a bit modish, isn’t it.

I am very blessed to share a community with other men in the act of writing, and it is their respect and belief that I am also much aware of. I cannot outrage the community of my own identity.

You never wrote me so long a letter, so full of the small details of your life. It is characteristic of you that it took an interest in a fellow creature, an artist, to bring the best out of you. But the luminous simplicity of your style comes over from your poetry into your letters and makes you very close to me.

The man who, I believe, was half drunk, replied only by all the oaths and abuse in which the Italian language is so rich. He ended by saying, “If I liked I could draw my sabre and cut you all to pieces, but as it is, I only arrest you,” and he called out to the guards at the gate arrestategli.

But here the drama is so simple. Search for food. Guard yourself or be food for something else. A few ants. A few flies.