Nusch Eluard & Rainer Maria Rilke

Dora Maar, 1935

 

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses

 who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. 

Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, 

something helpless that wants our love.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Irina Ionesco & Alan Moore

Eva, France, 1970



You
 wear a mask for so long,
you
 forget who you were beneath it.

Alan Moore
V for Vendetta

 

Jean Painlevé & Dejan Stojanovic

Photo by Jean Painlevé, Hippocampe femelle, 1931 

 I am the shore and the ocean, 

awaiting myself on both sides.

Dejan Stojanovic

Sebastião Salgado & Santosh Kalwar

Photo by Sebastiao Salgado, Aqua Mater 

 

Always be like water. 

Floats in the times of pain

 or dance

like waves 

along the wind

 which touches its surface.

Santosh Kalwar 

Henri Cartier-Bresson & E.E. Cummings

Photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Livorno, Italy 1933

I will take the sun in my mouth

and leap into the ripe air

Alive

with closed eyes

to dash against the darkness 

 E. E. Cummings, Poems 1923-1954

Bill Brandt & Hafiz of Shiraz

Photo by Bill Brandt 1952 Perspective of nudes 


I wish
 I could
show you
when you are lonely or in darkness
the astonishing light
of your own being.

Hafiz of Shiraz 

Horst P. Horst & William Faulkner

Photo by Horst P. Horst for Vogue 1930



You
cannot swim
for new horizons
 until
 you have courage to lose sight
of the shore.


William Faulkner 

 

Petecia Le Fawnhawk & Italo Calvino

Photo by Lefawnhawk , Modern Desert Magic




The ideal place for me
 is the one
 in which
 it is most natural
 to live
 as a foreigner.


Italo Calvino
The uses of literature

Alex Phénix & Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Photo by Alex Phénix, Antik, autoportrait of the artist, 2020



A woman
must be able to stand in the face of power,
because ultimately
some part of that power
will become
hers.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Women who run with the wolves

Thanks to the artist Alex Phénix
Instagram account: phenixthecat 

Giorgio Galimberti & Luis Sepulveda

Photo by Giorgio Galimberti, Camogli, 2018, Serie Nero Assoluto



I am the shadow of what we were,
and while there is light we exist.

A sombra do que somos
Luis Sepulveda

Herb Ritts & R.T. Bennet

Photo by Herb Ritts, Male nude, 1985



Accept yourself,
love yourself,
and keep moving forward.
If you want to fly,
you have to give up what weights you down.

Roy T. Bennet
The light in the heart

Robert Mapplethorpe & Cormac McCarthy

Photo by Robert Mapplethorpe, White Gaze

Scars

 have the strange power

 to remind us

 that our past

 is real.

Cormac McCarthy

Roberto Kusterle & 4 Non Blondes

Photo by Roberto Kusterle



And so I cry sometimes
When I'm lying in bed
Just to get it all out
What's in my head
And I, I am feeling a little peculiar
And so I wake in the morning
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream from the top of my lungs
What' s going on?

4 Non Blondes

Gilbert Garcin & Rumi

Photo by Gilbert Garcin



Your task is not to seek for love
 but merely to seek and find
all the barriers within yourself that
 you have built
 against it.

Rumi

Josef Sudek & Bertol Brecht

Photo by Josef Sudek



Weaknesses

You had none
I had one:
I loved.

Bertol Brecht

Helena Almeida & Borges

Pintura habitada, by Helena Almeida, 1975




I know what the Greeks do not know,
incertitude.


Jorge Luis Borges,
Labyrinths

Ernst Haas & Voltaire

Photo by Ernst Haas, Misfits, 1960




All men are by nature free,
you have therefore
an undoubted liberty to depart
whenever you please,
but
will have many and great difficulties
to encounter
in passing the frontiers.

Voltaire
Candide

Brooke Shaden & Roberto Bolaño

Brooke Shaden




So everything lets us down
 including curiosity and honesty
and what we love best.
Yes, said the voice,
but cheer up ,
 it is fun in the end.

Roberto Bolano
2666

Carlos Pereira & Nina

Photo by Carlos Pereira



(...) But I' m a woman
Can't you see what I am
I live and breathe for you
What good does it do
If I ain't got you
(...)

To Love Somebody
Nina Simone

Emmanuelle Brisson & Carl Sagan

Farfalle, by Emmanuelle Brisson




We are like butterflies who flutter for a day
and think it is
forever.

Carl Sagan