28 May (1886): Leo Tolstoy to V.G. Chertkov
The first awakening of his spiritual activity was revolutionary—scientific, as it’s called. What a terrible plague this is!...
27 May (1941): Ayn Rand to Channing Pollock
What we need most is quality, not quantity—as in all social matters...
26 May (1878): Mark Twain to William D. Howells
The view from these bird-cages is my despair. The pictures change from one enchanting aspect to another in ceaseless procession, never keeping one form half...
23 May (1933): Anaïs Nin to Henry Miller
You say I’m touchy. So are you...
22 May (1948): Elizabeth Bishop to Robert Lowell
Of course I irreverently suggested a shot of Novocain...
21 May (1972): Saul Bellow to Frances Gendlin
The world seems to expect that I will do all kinds of good things, and I spite it by doing all kinds of bad ones...
20 May (1813): Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen
(I hope somebody cares for these minutiæ)
19 May (1970): Anne Sexton to Philip Legler
I zapped into your life and I’m so glad I did. I’ll never really zap out. Put me there, friend, friend, forever...
16 May (1911): D.H. Lawrence to Louie Burrows
The idea is, my dear, just mad enough to send me dotty...
15 May (1945): James Agee to Father Flye
One can do nothing in the long run to force or persuade a Jew-hater to like Jews or to cease generalizing (which is more to...
14 May (1952): Raymond Chandler to Bernice Baumgarten
But alas, one grows up, one becomes complicated and unsure, one becomes interested in moral dilemmas, rather than who smacked who on the head. And...
13 May (1937): J.R.R. Tolkien to C.A. Furth
I am divided between knowledge of my own inability and fear of what American artists (doubtless of admirable skill) might produce...
12 May (1925): Zora Neale Hurston to Annie Nathan Meyer
All of the Editors of Verse Magazine are panting to know who the author of this masterpiece is—but you are my friend and must not...
9 May (1963): Amiri Baraka to Edward Dorn
Otherwise, of course, my family is humming & confused. & the kids, now suddenly ain’t got no old man! What kind of dumb shit is...
8 May (1929): Thomas Wolfe to Mabel Wolfe Wheaton
But wait until the poor people have to endure an empty belly and you’ll see a change. I think if I had any politics I’d...
7 May (1948): May Sarton to Juliette Huxley
Now words have so little meaning—and so much. I walk round and round them, searching for the exact truth. All the horizons are pushed very...
6 May (1941): Katherine Anne Porter to Donald Elder
There are a great number of things wrong in this country, and it is the fault of all of us: if we don’t...fight the things...
5 May (1958): Henry Miller to James Laughlin
I feel loath to make any compromise whatever, and certainly not a compromise which would make it look as though, towards the end of my...
2 May (1946): Martha Gellhorn to Eleanor Roosevelt
But Max Perkins, of Scribner’s, who seems to have a sort of literary divining rod, tells me I better do it, that it’s okay, and...
1 May (1912): Virginia Stephen Woolf to Leonard Woolf
There are moments—when you kissed me the other day was one—when I feel no more than a rock. And yet your caring for me as...
30 April (1891): Arthur Rimbaud to Marie Catherine Vitalie Cuif
Don’t be upset by all of this, regardless. Better days are coming. But it is a sad return on so much work, deprivation, and suffering!...
29 April (1950): Jessica Mitford to Lady Redesdale
I have been convinced since the beginning that it’s a frame-up (oh dear you don’t know what a frame-up means)...
28 April (1816): Lord Byron to Anne Isabella Milbanke
And recollect, that, though it may be an advantage to you to have lost a husband, it is sorrow to her to have the waters...
25 April (1934): Arna Bontemps to Langston Hughes
I have now just my transportation in sight—the price of this Ford is killing me—but I read in a paper that you and I...
