John

Deare Valeria,

Goe and catch a falling starre,
Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
Or who cleft the devil's foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy's stinging,
    And find
    What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
    And swear,
    No where
Lives a woman true and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,
Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
Though at next door we might meet,
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
    Yet she
    Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

Yr honorable Serv't,

John Donne

Jean

Dear Valeria,

Happy? No, not happy. Your aim is wrong. There is no such thing as happiness. Life bends joy and pain, beauty and ugliness, in such a way that no one may isolate them. No one should want to. Perfect joy, or perfect pain, with no contrasting element to define them, would mean a monotony of consciousness, would mean death.

Kind Regards,

Jean Toomer

Carl

Dear Valeria,

I am often asked why I nearly always select old material, fairy tales and legends for my stage works. I do not look upon them as old, but rather as valid material. The time element disappears, and only the spiritual power remains. My entire interest is in the expression of spiritual realities. I write for the theater in order to convey a spiritual attitude.

Sincerely yours,

Carl Orff

Virginia

Dear Valeria,

Yet there are moments when the walls of the mind grow thin; when nothing is unabsorbed, and I could fancy that we might blow so vast a bubble that the sun might set and rise in it and we might take the blue of midday and the black of midnight and be cast off and escape from here and now.

Kind regards,

Virginia Woolf

Girolamo

Spectabile Valeria,

Se il giovin quale Ulpian, Bartolo e Baldo
Disturban spesso e l'aspra inopia e dura
Non viene afforza al poetar men saldo,
E a l'avvocar rivolti ogni sua cura;
Io per certo infiammato esser e caldo
A fare il veggio un'immortal scrittura,
Gli dia la vita il Ciel, sostegno e 'l nido,
E 'l gran Cosmo udirà, d'altr'opra il grido.

Distinti Saluti,

Girolamo Maggi

Ludwig

Dear Valeria, 

I want to seize fate by the throat. 

All the best,

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ganesh

Dear Valeria,

I am a fighter against oppression and injustice, whether practised by bureaucrats, zamindars, capitalists or those of high caste. I have fought all my life against oppression against inhumanity and may God give me strength to fight on till the last.

All my best,

Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi

Jules

Dear Valeria, 

'Is the Master out of his mind?' she asked me. 
I nodded. 
'And he's taking you with him?' 
I nodded again. 
'Where?' she asked. I pointed towards the centre of the earth. 
'Into the cellar?' exclaimed the old servant. 
'No,' I said, 'farther down than that.' 

Kind regards, 

Jules Verne

Peter

Dear Valeria,

No, no. Our private conversations have not been such that I am anxious to continue them. Forgive me for speaking so bluntly, but it is the truth.

Much love,

Peter Lorre

Paul

Dear Valeria, 

but maybe it's up in the hills under the leaves or in a ditch somewhere. Maybe it's never found. But what you find, whatever you find, is always only part of the missing, and writing is the way the poet finds out what it is he found. 

Take care, 

Paul Engle

Ernie

Dear Valeria,

This is from a play what I wrote:

"Rocky felt a tingle of excitement as his executive jet touched down in Amsterdam. It was his first visit to Italy."

Best Regards,

Ernie Wise

Khushal

Dear Valeria,

Your principle should be to see everything and say nothing. The world changes so rapidly that if you want to get on you cannot afford to align yourself with any person or point of view.

Peace,

Khushwant Singh

Carl Theodor

Dear Valeria, 

nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. It is a land one can never tire of exploring. There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the expression of a sensitive face under the mysterious power of inspiration. 

Best Regards, 

Carl Theodor Dreyer

Abu Zaid

Dear Valeria,

If the soul is impartial in receiving information, it devotes to that information the share of critical investigation the information deserves, and its truth or untruth thus becomes clear. However, if the soul is infected with partisanship for a particular opinion or sect, it accepts without a moment’s hesitation the information that is agreeable to it. Prejudice and partisanship obscure the critical faculty and preclude critical investigation. The results is that falsehoods are accepted and transmitted.

أبو زيد عبد الرحمن بن محمد بن خلدون الحضرمي
(Abū Zayd ‘Abdu r-Raḥmān bin Muḥammad bin Khaldūn Al-Ḥaḍrami)

Odysseas

Dear Valeria,

You'll come to learn a great deal if you study the Insignificant in depth.

All the best,

Odysseas Elytis

Andre

Dear Valeria,

Much of what she read now was confused or so alien to Erb that it had no meaning for her. But she saw a great city plunged into flaming death in an instant and felt the horror and remorse of the man at her feet because of his own part in that act, the horror and remorse which had led him to open rebellion and so to his imprisonment. There was a last dark and frightening memory of a door closing on light and hope—

Best regards,

Andre Alice Norton

Selma

Dear Valeria, 

have you ever seen a child sitting on its mother’s knee listening to fairy stories? As long as the child is told of cruel giants and of the terrible suffering of beautiful princesses, it holds its head up and its eyes open; but if the mother begins to speak of happiness and sunshine, the little one closes its eyes and falls asleep with its head against her breast. . .  I am a child like that, too. Others may like stories of flowers and sunshine; but I choose the dark nights and sad destinies. 

Love, 

Selma Lagerlöf

Howard

Dear Valeria,

What a man does for pay is of little significance. What he is, as a sensitive instrument responsive to the world's beauty, is everything!

Best regards,

Howard Phillips Lovecraft

Tony

Dear Valeria,

I was born about a quarter of a mile from where we are sitting now and I was here in London during the Blitz. And every night I went down into the shelter. 500 people killed, my brother was killed, my friends were killed. And when the Charter of the UN was read to me, I was a pilot coming home in a troop ship: ‘We the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.’ That was the pledge my generation gave to the younger generation and you tore it up. And it’s a war crime that’s been committed in Iraq, because there is no moral difference between a stealth bomber and a suicide bomber. Both kill innocent people for political reasons.

Peace,

Tony Benn

Karl

Dear Valeria, 

everyone who knows anything of history also knows that great social revolutions are impossible without the feminine ferment.

Best wishes, 

Karl Marx

Elizabeth

Dear Valeria,

And then I ran to get away,
But when I stopped and turned to see,
The tree was bending to the side
And leaning out to look at me.

Best regards,

Elizabeth Madox Roberts

Howard

Dear Valeria,

In the life of the gladiator, there were four times. Childhood was a happy time of not knowing, and the time of his youth was full of knowledge and sorrow and hatred. The time of hope was the time when he fought with Spartacus, and the time of despair was the time when it became known to him that their cause was lost. This was the end of the time of despair. Now he was dying.

Best regards,

Howard Fast

Bob

Dear Valeria,

I won't shed one single tear over her death. She destroyed the NHS and destroyed industry in this country and as far as I'm concerned she can rot in hell.

Best regards,

Bob Crow