Unsent Letter Quotes

“Well, I tried drowning, but that didn't work; somehow the urge to life, mere physical life, is damn strong, and I felt that I could swim forever straight out into the sea and sun and never be able to swallow more than a gulp or two of water and swim on. The body is amazingly stubborn when it comes to sacrificing itself to the annihilating directions of the mind.”
― Sylvia Plath, Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume I: 1940-1956

“Unsent letters carry a kind of cruelty. A letter is written as a space shared by two people; by not sending it, its writer claims the power to include and exclude the recipient simultaneously. Out of cowardice or control an act is performed in the name of caring or discretion. Unsent letters should never be written. But what difference is there between an unsent and an unwritten letter? The truth is already there. Self-imposed silence speaks, too, though not to communicate but to punish.”
― Yiyun Li, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life

“And

this letter
I didn't send
how surprising

to find it now.

All this love I must have felt.”
― Laura Kasischke, Space, in Chains

“Neither bird from your side came,
Nor whirlwind brought your word...
Nostalgia is my bread,
Your memory — my sea,
I live among the dead —
Of what we could not be.”
― Sana Ullah Wazir, Not Paradise Lost — Paradise Taken