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

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 

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

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

Julia Margaret Cameron & Lev Tolstoj

Photo by Julia Margaret Cameron,
The parting of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, 1874



I think...
if it is true that
there are
as many minds as there are heads,
then
there are
as many kinds of love
as there are hearts.

Lev Tolstoj
Anna Karenina

Pavel Baňka & Robert Browning

Photo by Pavel Banka, Vertical Construction, 1985




My sun sets to rise again.

Robert Browning 

Jalali Bahman & Paul Anka

Photo by Jalali Bahman, Image of imagination



You caught me fooling around for sombody new
You caught me fooling around now I am losing you
'Cause you are a one man woman
You' re one man woman
You' re one man woman
But I am a two timing man.


Paul Anka
One man woman, one woman man

Izu Yumiko & Gyula Krudy

Photo by Izu Yumiko, Secret Garden, 2007



Let crazy life rush headlong on the highway for others;
we shall contemplate the sunflowers,
watch them sprout, blossom, fade away.
Yesterday they were still giants,
but now,
in autumn,
they are thatch on the roof.

Gyula Krudy,
Sunflowers