“What is it with me? Am I absolutely nobody, but merely inordinately vain? I do not know… But I am most fearfully unhappy. That is all. I am so unhappy that I wish I was dead—yet I should be mad to die when I have not yet lived at all.”

—Katherine Mansfield

“Why does one feel so different at night? Why is it so exciting to be awake when everybody else is asleep? Late—it is very late! And yet every moment you feel more and more wakeful, as though you were slowly, almost with every breath, waking up into a new, wonderful, far more thrilling and exciting world than the daylight one. And what is this queer sensation that you’re a conspirator? Lightly, stealthily you move about your room. You take something off the dressing-table and put it down again without a sound. And everything, even the bedpost, knows you, responds, shares your secret…” ”

—Katherine Mansfield

“Chaos is not when I think of you incessantly or when I have trouble moving because your presence devours my universe. Chaos is not when I am missing you beyond repair or when I am longing for your soul to either shatter or embrace mine. Chaos is precisely when I can instantly get you out of my head, without the need of distractions or illusions, but have absolutely no wish to. ”

—Katherine Mansfield, from The Scrapbook Of Katherine Mansfield

“(...) Além do mais, não tenho paciência com gente que não consegue desprender-se das coisas, que continua indo atrás delas e se lamenta. Quando algo acabou, então acabou. Chegou ao fim e pronto. Deixe ir! Ignore, e console-se, caso queira consolar-se com o pensamento de que jamais se recupera a mesma coisa que se perdeu. Sempre será uma coisa nova. No momento em que nos deixa, ela se modifica. Isso é verdade até mesmo em relação a um chapéu de que se corre atrás; e eu não me refiro a um plano superficial, mas a um plano profundo… Jamais lamentar, jamais olhar para trás: fiz disso uma regra de vida. Lamentar-se é um estarrecedor desperdício de energia, e ninguém que pretenda ser escritor pode se permitir tamanha indulgência. Não se pode dar forma a isto; a partir disso nada se pode construir; serve apenas para a gente chafurdar. Claro que olhar para trás é igualmente fatal para a Arte. É manter-se pobre. A Arte não pode e não suportará a pobreza.”

Katherine Mansfield - Je Ne Parle pas Français.

“The mind I love most must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind.” ”

—Katherine Mansfield, The Katherine Mansfield Notebooks

“The pleasure of reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.”

Katherine Mansfield.

“A great poem makes us experience a moment, and a great short story makes us experience an epiphany, and a great novel makes us experience an entire other life.”

—Katherine Mansfield

“Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.”

—Katherine Mansfield, from The Journal Of Katherine Mansfield

“The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody's fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind.”

—Katherine Mansfield

“The mind I love most must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind.”

—Katherine Mansfield

“Can you understand? Can I make you understand somehow? You have begun to mean the world; you have begun to mean poetry and heartbeats and inexplicable mood reactions and songs and scents and conflicting words which do not match yet somehow match. You are not only a series of question marks and abstract references: You are meaning itself. You are a bright inner composure of numerous elements. Now can you possibly understand — I am merely words. I used to believe I was merely words and I do not know whether I shall start hoping for something more. You planted that sense of hope in a secret deeply hidden place; it had walls made of bricks and huge abandoned gardens full of despair. It was covered in dusty waves and it was kept underground where no soul would ever walk. And you walked there - you planted hope. And now I cannot imagine myself without it.”

—Selected Letters (Katherine Mansfield)

“The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody's fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind.”

—Katherine Mansfield

“But in her bosom there was still that bright glowing place-that shower of little sparks coming from it. It was almost unbearable. She hardly dared to breathe for fear of fanning it higher, and yet she breathed deeply, deeply. She hardly dared to look into the cold mirror-but she did look, and it gave her back a woman, radiant, with smiling, trembling lips, with big, dark eyes and an air of listening, waiting for something . . . divine to happen . . . that she knew must happen . . . infallibly.”

—Katherine Mansfield, “Bliss
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