Remember you are free to wander away

As You Came From the Holy Land, John Ashbery

I'd be boy and you'd be girl

But her words, so light, so soft, so chill, seemed to hover in the air, to rain into his breast, like snow.

The Stranger, Katherine Mansfield

I know not how it falls on me - II

William Eggleston, Memphis, Tennessee, 1974-75

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #11, 1978

Balthus, Sleeping Girl, 1943

I know not how it falls on me - I

Ingmar Bergman, Viskningar och rop, 1973

Bernardo Bertolucci, Il Conformista, 1970

It only makes one feel how one adores English prose, how to be a writer - is everything. I do believe that the time has come for a 'new word' but I imagine the new word will not be spoken easily. People have never explored the lovely medium of prose. It is a hidden country still - I feel that so profoundly.

July 1919, The Letters and Journals of Katherine Mansfield

How to grow a wisteria.

André Kertész, Greenwich Village, New York City, 1963

There is a wharf not far from here where the sand barges unload. Do you know the smell of wet sand? Does it make you think of going to the beach in the evening light after a rainy day and gathering the damp drift wood (it will dry on top of the stove) and picking up for a moment the long branches of sea weed that the waves have tossed and listening to the gulls who stand reflected in the gleaming sand, and just fly a little way off as you come and then - settle again...

17 May 1915, The Letters and Journals of Katherine Mansfield

A bird, large and silent, flies from the river right into the flowering sky. There is no other sound except the voice of the passionate river.

1907, The Letters and Journals of Katherine Mansfield

On the journey the sea was most beautiful, a silver-point etching, and a pale sun breaking through pearl clouds.

1907, November-December, The Letters and Journals of Katherine Mansfield

A pair of shorts hanging on a hook began to flutter in the first breeze and how I welcomed it, knowing that it heralded night.

The Mouth of the Cave, Edna O'Brien

God help the girl.

Never fall in love with a butterfly.

Snoopy

They might be psycho killers but tonight I really don't care.

Jens Lekman

He simply said my name. He said 'Martha', and once again I could feel it happening. My legs trembled under the big white cloth and my head became fuzzy, though I was not drunk. It's how I fall in love.

The Love Object, Edna O'Brien

I am at the sea - at Island Bay in fact - lying flat on my face on the warm white sand. And before me the sea stretches.

1907, The Letters and Journals of Katherine Mansfield