Gerda

Dear Valeria,

Never stop fighting,

Gerda Taro

Joseph

Dear Valeria,

I know that my retirement will make no difference in my newspaper’s cardinal principles, that it will always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.

Yours sincerely,

Joseph Pullitzer

Anatole

Dear Valeria,

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.

yours,

Anatole France

Italo

Carissima Valeria,

Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined?

con affetto,

Italo Calvino

Ahmad

Dear Valeria,

They smell your mouth 
To find out if you have told someone: I love you! 
They smell your heart!

Such a strange time it is, my dear; 
And they punish Love 
At thoroughfares 
By flogging. 
We must hide our 
Love in dark closets. 
In this crooked dead end of a bitter cold 
They keep their fire alive 
By burning our songs and poems; 
Do not place your life in peril by your thoughts! 

Such a strange time it is, my dear! 

Warmest Regards.

Ahmad Shamloo

Dorothy

Dear Valeria,

Miriam's amazement silenced her. She stood back from the mirror. She could not look into it until Harriett had gone. The phrases she had just heard rang in her head without meaning. But she knew she would remember all of them. She went on doing her hair with downcast eyes. She had seen Harriett vividly, and had longed to crush her in her arms and kiss her little round cheeks and the snub of her nose. Then she wanted her to be gone.

Presently Harriett took up a brooch and skated down the room, "Ta-ra-ra-la-eee-tee!" she carolled, "don't be long," and disappeared.

"I'm pretty," murmured Miriam, planting herself in front of the dressing-table. "I'm pretty — they like me — they like me. Why didn't I know?" She did not look into the mirror. "They all like me, me."

Best regards,

Dorothy Miller Richardson

Lucretia

My dear Valeria,

THIS was Mrs. Peterkin. It was a mistake. She had poured out a delicious cup of coffee, and, just as she was helping herself to cream, she found she had put in salt instead of sugar! It tasted bad. What should she do? Of course she couldn't drink the coffee; so she called in the family, for she was sitting at a late breakfast all alone. The family came in; they all tasted, and looked, and wondered what should be done, and all sat down to think.

Best Regards,

Lucretia Peabody Hale

Gabo

Dear Valeria,

I dare to think that it is this outsized reality, and not just its literary expression, that has deserved the attention of the Swedish Academy of Letters. A reality not of paper, but one that lives within us and determines each instant of our countless daily deaths, and that nourishes a source of insatiable creativity, full of sorrow and beauty, of which this roving and nostalgic Colombian is but one cipher more, singled out by fortune. Poets and beggars, musicians and prophets, warriors and scoundrels, all creatures of that unbridled reality, we have had to ask but little of imagination, for our crucial problem has been a lack of conventional means to render our lives believable. This, my friends, is the crux of our solitude.

Best regards,

Gabriel García Márquez