Echoes Across Time

The Sadness That Makes the Work

John Keats writing his odes with years left to live, Rainer Maria Rilke on the angel of beauty, Fernando Pessoa on the pain of being — the long, strange relationship between creative genius and melancholy.

38 total quotes

“
I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo.

—Richard WrightNovelist & Critic

Early Modern ERA • North America

“
Dreams are but shadows of reality, sometimes more vivid than the waking world.

—Amparo DávilaWriter

Post-War ERA • Latin America

“
Love is a fire that burns unseen.

—Luís de CamõesPoet

Renaissance ERA • Southern Europe

“
Genius is the capacity to feel pain.

—F. Scott FitzgeraldNovelist & Essayist

Early Modern ERA • North America

“
To be a poet is to know the beauty of the universe and suffer for it.

—Rubén DaríoPoet

Industrial Age ERA • Central America

“
Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror we're still just able to endure.

—Rainer Maria RilkePoet

Early Modern ERA • Western Europe

“
Misery is a form of inverted beauty.

—Diamela EltitNovelist, Essayist & Theorist

Late Modern ERA • Latin America

“
Beauty is truth, truth beauty — that is all ye know on earth.

—John KeatsPoet

Industrial Age ERA • Western Europe

“
Writing is also not speaking. It is silence. It is the cry.

—Marguerite DurasNovelist

Post-War ERA • Western Europe

“
I carry within me a deep silence, a garden of unuttered dreams.

—Juana de IbarbourouPoet

Early Modern ERA • Latin America

“
Love is not fashionable any more, the poets are coming down with reality.

—Bessie HeadNovelist

Post-War ERA • Southern Africa

“
Silence is the artist's ultimate other face.

—Susan SontagWriter & Critic

Post-War ERA • North America

“
Writing is breathing for me. It is a necessary evil.

—Sony Labou TansiPlaywright & Novelist

Late Modern ERA • West Africa

“
The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.

—Edgar Allan PoePoet & Writer

Industrial Age ERA • North America

“
I am alone and write in a language that is not mine, but it is the language of what I am.

—Alejandra PizarnikPoet

Post-War ERA • Latin America

“
Writing is not describing. It is reaching toward something unreachable.

—Marguerite DurasNovelist

Contemporary ERA • Western Europe

“
I am and remain a lonely wanderer.

—Edvard GriegComposer

Industrial Age ERA • Nordic

“
My soul is a secret orchestra; I know not what instruments, what sounds.

—Fernando PessoaPoet & Writer

Early Modern ERA • Southern Europe

“
To be a poet in Central America is to carry the scars of history.

—Claribel AlegríaPoet & Novelist

Late Modern ERA • Central America

“
Let me begin again in the language that is not my own.

—Ocean VuongPoet & Novelist

Digital Age ERA • North America

Loading more...