Key Insights & Memorable Quotes
Below are the most popular and impactful highlights and quotes from Letters to Milena:
“I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.”
“I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. Basically it is nothing other than this fear we have so often talked about, but fear spread to everything, fear of the greatest as of the smallest, fear, paralyzing fear of pronouncing a word, although this fear may not only be fear but also a longing for something greater than all that is fearful.”
“You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.”
“I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly.”
“I’m tired, can’t think of anything and want only to lay my face in your lap, feel your hand on my head and remain like that through all eternity.”
“In a way, you are poetry material; You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality.”
“Yours(now I'm even losing my name - it was getting shorter and shorter all the time and is now: Yours)”
“Dear Milena,I wish the world were ending tomorrow. Then I could take the next train, arrive at your doorstep in Vienna, and say: “Come with me, Milena. We are going to love each other without scruples or fear or restraint. Because the world is ending tomorrow.” Perhaps we don’t love unreasonably because we think we have time, or have to reckon with time. But what if we don't have time? Or what if time, as we know it, is irrelevant? Ah, if only the world were ending tomorrow. We could help each other very much.”
“Written kisses don't reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts.”
“I want in fact more of you. In my mind I am dressing you with light; I am wrapping you up in blankets of complete acceptance and then I give myself to you. I long for you; I who usually long without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.”
“Do you know, darling? When you became involved with others you quite possibly stepped down a level or two, but If you become involved with me, you will be throwing yourself into the abyss.”
“I’m doing badly, I’m doing well, whichever you prefer.”
“I am dirty, Milena, endlessly dirty, that is why I make such a fuss about cleanliness. None sing as purely as those in deepest hell; it is their singing we take for the singing of angels.”
“sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless manthe most guilty.”
“When one is alone, imperfection must be endured every minute of the day; a couple, however, does not have to put up with it. Aren’t our eyes made to be torn out, and our hearts for the same purpose? At the same time it’s really not that bad; that’s an exaggeration and a lie, everything is exaggeration, the only truth is longing. But even the truth of longing is not so much its own truth; it’s really an expression for everything else, which is a lie. This sounds crazy and distorted, but it’s true. Moreover, perhaps it isn’t love when I say you are what I love the most - you are the knife I turn inside myself, this is love. This, my dear, is love.”
“For myself I am too heavy, and for you too light.”
“I long for you; I who usually longs without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.”
“I am always trying to convey something that can’t be conveyed, to explain something which is inexplicable, to tell about something I have in my bones, something which can be expressed only in the bones.”
“I’m thinking only of my illness and my health, though both, the first as well as the second, are you.”
“If I could drown in sleep as I drown in fear I would be no longer alive.”
“Sometimes I have the feeling that we're in one room with two opposite doors and each of us holds the handle of one door, one of us flicks an eyelash and the other is already behind his door, and now the first one has but to utter a word ad immediately the second one has closed his door behind him and can no longer be seen. He's sure to open the door again for it's a room which perhaps one cannot leave. If only the first one were not precisely like the second, if he were calm, if he would only pretend not to look at the other, if he slowly set the room in order as though it were a room like any other; but instead he does exactly the same as the other at his door, sometimes even both are behind the doors and the the beautiful room is empty.”
“أنا قذر يا ميلينا، قذر بلا حدود، لذلك أصرخ كثيراً بشأن الطهارة”
“Milena, if a million loved you, I am one of them, and if one loved you, it was me, if no one loved you then know that I am dead.”
“I can’t feel a thing; All mournful petal storms are dancing inside the very private spring of my head.”
“I can't think of anything to write about, I'm just walking around here between the lines, under the light of your eyes, in the breadth of your mouth as in a beautiful happy day, which remains beautiful and happy, even when the head is sick and tired.”
“Go on caring for me.”
“Nor is it perhaps really love when I say that for me you are the most beloved; In this love you are like a knife, with which I explore myself.”
“It seems to be a fact that man, tortured by his demons, avenges himself blindly on his fellow-man.”
“And don't demand any sincerity from me, Milena. No one can demand it from me more than I myself and yet many things elude me, I'm sure, perhaps everything eludes me.”
“it was like this. the brain could no longer bear the worries and pains that were imposed on it. it said: "i'm giving up; but if there is anyone else here who is interested in preserving the whole, let him assume part of my burden and it will be alright for a bit.”
