Marguerite Yourcenar and Grace Frick
“This letter, my dear, will be very long. I am not very fond of writing. I have often read that words falsify thought, but it seems to me that written words falsify it even more: you know how little is left of a text after two successive translations. Then too, I do not know how to go about it. Writing is a perpetual choice between a thousand expressions, none of which satisfies me, none of which, above all, satisfies me without the others. Yet I ought to know that only music permits such a succession of chords. A letter, even the longest, is obliged to simplify what should not have been simplified: one is always so much less clear the minute one tried to be complete. I should like to make here an effort not only of sincerity but also of precision: hence, these pages will contain many erasures; they do already. What I would ask of you (the only thing I can still ask of you) is not to skip over any of these lines which have cost me so much. For it is difficult to live. It is even more difficult to explain one’s life.”
– Marguerite Yourcenar, “Alexis”
I like it because it’s true and I like to read it over and over again and go, “Yeah…“. :]
– Mushpa
mushpamensa.wordpress.com 