The day outside was full of changing light, and Jonas danced in and out of shadows as he followed me. When I ran Jonas ran, and when I stopped and stood still he stopped and glanced at me and then went briskly off in another direction, as though we were not acquainted, and then he sat down and waited for me to run again. We were going to the long field which today looked like an ocean, although I had never seen an ocean; the grass was moving in the breeze and the cloud shadows passed back and forth and the trees in the distance moved.

Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson

- Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.

— Shirley Jackson, from The Haunting of Hill House (via lifeinpoetry)

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, 1959

Nothing irrevocable had yet been spoken, but there was only the barest margin of safety left them; each of them moving delicately along the outskirts of an open question, and, once spoken, such a question — as “Do you love me?”— could never be answered or forgotten.

Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House, 1959 (via megairea)

No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality...

Shirley Jackson, from 'The Haunting of Hill House'

The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

I think that an atmosphere like this one can find out the flaws and faults and weaknesses in all of us, and break us apart in a matter of days. We have only one defense, and that is running away.

Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

And always in the sliver of time that followed nothing hapenned if she kept waiting for what was going to happen

Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart

from each wound rises a cry

Marina Tsvetaeva, from ‘The Encampment of the Swans’, Selected Poems  

Marina Tsvetaeva, from ‘Poems for Blok’, Selected Poems  

Marina Tsvetaeva, from ‘Poems for Akhmatova’, Selected Poems

But there is no peace in my mind anywhere

Marina Tsvetaeva, from ‘Insomnia’, Selected Poems

“Estoy aquí, pero noviembre llega de color tristeza.” 

— Lucía Etxebarria, Amor, curiosidad, prozac y dudas

I do not forgive myself for being born. It is as if, creeping into this world, I had profaned a mystery, betrayed some momentous pledge, committed a fault of nameless gravity. Yet in a less assured mood, birth seems a calamity I would be miserable not having known.

E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born (Trans. Richard Howard)

There are nights that the most ingenious torturers could not have invented. We emerge from them in pieces, stupid, dazed, with neither memories nor anticipations, and without even knowing who we are. And it is then that the day seems useless, light pernicious, even more oppressive than the darkness.

E. M. Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born (Trans. Richard Howard)