“When you surrender, the problem ceases to exist. Try to solve it,or conquer it, and you only set up more resistance. I am very certain now that, as I said therein, if I truly become what I wish to be, the burden will fall away. The most difficult thing to admit, and to realize with one’s whole being, is that you alone control nothing.”
― A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953
― A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller, 1932-1953
“It seems so dreadful to be a bachelor, to become an old man struggling to keep one's dignity while begging for an invitation whenever one wants to spend an evening in company, having to carry one's meal home in one's hand, unable to expect anyone with a lazy sense of calm confidence, able only with difficulty and vexation to give a gift to someone, having to say good night at the front door, never being able to run up a stairway beside one's wife, to lie ill and have only the solace of the view from one's window when one can sit up, to have only side doors in one's room leading into other people's living rooms, to feel estranged from one’s family, with whom one can keep on close terms only by marriage, first by the marriage of one's parents, then, when the effect of that has worn off, by one's own, having to admire other people's children and not even being allowed to go on saying: “I have none myself,” never to feel oneself grow older since there is no family growing up around one, modeling oneself in appearance and behavior on one or two bachelors remembered from our youth.”
― Diaries, 1910-1923
― Diaries, 1910-1923
“This afternoon the pain occasioned by my loneliness came upon me so piercingly and intensely that I became aware that the strength which I gain through this writing thus spends itself, a strength which I certainly have not intended for this purpose.”
― Diaries, 1910-1923
― Diaries, 1910-1923
“I feel an unhappiness which almost dismembers me, and at the same time am convinced of its necessity”
― Diaries, 1910-1923
― Diaries, 1910-1923
“My job is unbearable to me because it conflicts with my only desire and my only calling, which is literature. Since I am nothing but literature and can and want to be nothing else, my job will never take possession of me, it may, however, shatter me completely, and this is by no means a remote possibility.”
― Diaries, 1910-1923
― Diaries, 1910-1923
Lost Generation
— 222 members
— last activity Jul 02, 2015 03:59PM
In the epigraph to Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, Gertrude Stein is credited with coining the term 'lost generation' to describe the group of ...more
Literary Fiction by People of Color
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— last activity 4 hours, 28 min ago
This can include genre fiction that is literary (e.g. speculative fiction, historical fiction, etc.), as long as it's written by a person of color (Af ...more
Art Lovers
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— last activity 19 hours, 19 min ago
To reciprocate the appreciation of different artists and discuss their lives and works.
Poetry Readers Challenge
— 646 members
— last activity Jan 08, 2026 06:18AM
Let's talk about poetry books. This group's members read poetry collections, with the goal of reviewing twenty in a year. C'mon. Do it. It's good for ...more
Erika’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Erika’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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