Lisa Mussi > Lisa's Quotes

“And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we who never let each other sleep above it.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva, Selected Poems

“However much you feed a wolf, it always looks to the forest. We are all wolves of the dense forest of Eternity.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva

“What is this gypsy passion for separation, this
readiness to rush off when we've just met?
My head rests in my hands as I
realize, looking into the night

that no one turning over our letters has
yet understood how completely and
how deeply faithless we are, which is
to say: how true we are to ourselves.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva

“I am only a shell where the ocean is still sounding.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva, Selected Poems

“I kissed you! I witched you!
I laugh at the afterlife’s dark.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva, In the Inmost Hour of the Soul

“And I’m starving – in the literal sense. Idiots think hunger – is the body. No, hunger – is the soul, the whole weight of it falls directly on the soul.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva, Earthly Signs: Moscow Diaries, 1917–1922

“Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but 'steal' some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
― Albert Camus

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”
― Albert Camus

“She was breathing deeply, she forgot the cold, the weight of beings, the insane or static life, the long anguish of living or dying. After so many years running from fear, fleeing crazily, uselessly, she was finally coming to a halt. At the same time she seemed to be recovering her roots, and the sap rose anew in her body, which was no longer trembling. Pressing her whole belly against the parapet, leaning toward the wheeling sky, she was only waiting for her pounding heart to settle down, and for the silence to form in her. The last constellations of stars fell in bunches a little lower on the horizon of the desert, and stood motionless. Then, with an unbearable sweetness, the waters of the night began to fill her, submerging the cold, rising gradually to the center of her being, and overflowing wave upon wave to her moaning mouth. A moment later, the whole sky stretched out above her as she lay with her back against the cold earth.”
― Albert Camus

“I love life - that’s my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“Get scared. It will do you good. Smoke a bit, stare blankly at some ceilings, beat your head against some walls, refuse to see some people, paint and write. Get scared some more. Allow your little mind to do nothing but function. Stay inside, go out - I don’t care what you’ll do; but stay scared as hell. You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself.”
― Albert Camus

“At the skin, my blood calls out to
your heart, my whole sky craves
an island of tenderness.
My rivers tilt towards you.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva, Selected Poems

“I have two enemies in all the world,
Two twins, inseparably fused:
The hunger of the hungry and the fullness of the full.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva, Selected Poems

“Your name is a -- bird in my hand
a piece of -- ice on the tongue
one single movement of the lips.
Your name is: five signs,
a ball caught in flight, a
silver bell in the mouth

a stone, cast in a quiet pool
makes the splash of your name, and
the sound is in the clatter of
night hooves, loud as a thunderclap
or it speaks straight into my forehead,
shrill as the click of a cocked gun.

Your name -- how impossible, it
is a kiss in the eyes on
motionless eyelashes, chill and sweet.
Your name is a kiss of snow
a gulp of icy spring water, blue
as a dove. About your name is: sleep.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva

“I want to sleep with you, fall asleep and sleep. That magnificent folk word, how deep, how true, how unequivocal, how exactly what it says. Just – sleep. And nothing more. No, another thing: and know right into the deepest sleep that it is you. And more: how your heart sounds. And – kiss your heart.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva, Letters: Summer 1926

“Where does such tenderness come from
And what do I do with it, you, sly,
Adolescent, vagabond singer,
Whose lashes couldn’t be longer?”
― Marina Tsvetaeva, My Poems...: Selected Poetry

“I have two foes in the world, twins inextricably interrelated -- the hunger of the hungry and the glut of the glutted!”
― Marina Tsvetaeva

“Previously, everything that I love was called -- I, now it's -- You. But it's the same thing.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva, Earthly Signs: Moscow Diaries, 1917–1922

“What is the main thing in love? To know and to hide. To know about the one you love and to hide that you love. At times the hiding (shame) overpowers the knowing (passion). The passion for the hidden—the passion for the revealed.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva

“I know wherever you are, there are poems.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva, Bride of Ice: New Selected Poems

“An Attempt at Jealousy"

How is your life with an ordinary
woman? without the god inside her?
The queen supplanted—

How do you breathe now?
Flinch, waking up?
What do you do, poor man?

How’s your life with a tourist
on Earth? Her rib (do you love her?)
is it to your liking?

How do you live with cheap goods: is the market rising?
How’s kissing plaster-dust?

Are you bored with her new body?
How’s it going, with an earthly woman,
with no sixth sense?

Are you happy?
No? In a shallow pit—how is your life,
my beloved? Hard as mine
with another man?”
― Marina Tsvetaeva, Selected Poems

“I will win you away from every earth, from every sky,
For the woods are my place of birth, and the place to die,
For while standing on earth I touch it with but one foot,
For I'll sing your worth as nobody could or would.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva

“The complete concurrence of souls requires the concurrence of the breath, for what is the breath, if not the rhythm of the soul? And thus, in order for people to understand one another, they must walk or lie side by side.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva, Earthly Signs: Moscow Diaries, 1917–1922

“I - am. You - will be. An abyss between us.
I drink. You thirst. In vain we try to agree.
Ten years between us, a hundred thousand
Years between us. - God builds no bridges.
Be! - that's my commandment! Let me pass
So that my breath doesn't hinder your growth.
I - am. You - will be. Some ten springs from now,
You'll say : - I am! - and I will say : - once was...”
― Marina Tsvetaeva

“What am I here for? To listen to my soul.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva, Earthly Signs: Moscow Diaries, 1917–1922

“Perhaps we may meet each other in a dream.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva

“Where does such tenderness come from?”

Where does such tenderness come from?
These aren’t the first curls
I’ve wound around my finger—
I’ve kissed lips darker than yours.

The sky is washed and dark
(Where does such tenderness come from?)
Other eyes have known
and shifted away from my eyes.

But I’ve never heard words like this
in the night
(Where does such tenderness come from?)
with my head on your chest, rest.

Where does this tenderness come from?
And what will I do with it? Young
stranger, poet, wandering through town,
you and your eyelashes—longer than anyone’s.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva

“A deep sigh — an interview with a knife.”
― Marina Tsvetaeva

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”
― Anais Nin