Yelena

Dear Vava,

Really, it is quite useless to go to Tibet or India to recover some knowledge or power that are hidden in any human soul; but acquisition of higher knowledge and power requires not only many years of intensive studying under the guidance of higher mind together with a resolution that cannot be shaken by any danger, and as much as years of relative solitude, in communication with disciples only which pursue the same aim, and in such a place where both the nature and the neophyte preserve a perfect and unbroken rest if not the silence! There the air is not poisoned by miasmas around a hundreds miles, and there the atmosphere and human magnetism are quite clear and there the animal’s blood is never shed.

Yours,

Yelena Petrovka Blavaskaya

James

Dear Valeria, 

The temple of the sylvan goddess, indeed, has vanished, and the King of the Wood no longer stands sentinel over the Golden Bough.

Best wishes,

James Frazer

Marlene

Darling Valeria,

Most of us city dwellers open our windows onto dreary views if we open them at all. The Romans not only open them, but every nook and cranny of their town is beautiful. What fools we are, we, who don't live there.

Mwah, mwah, darlink!

Marlene Dietrich

Mário

Querida Valeria,

Portraits on the wall 
Cannot remain abstract for long
Sometimes their eyes will gaze at you, unyielding,
Because they never become
Fully dehumanized.
Never look back, suddenly.
Don’t, don’t look now!

Forget me slowly,

Mario Quintana

Edith

Dear Valeria,

"I remember," he said in the dreamy tone always promising so well to the ear that a story delighteth—"I remember, when I was a young man, I was very lonely indeed. I never had a sweetheart. I was always lame, my dear, from quite a boy; and the girls used to laugh at me."

With warmest regards,

Edith Nesbit

George

Dear Valeria,

Formosa is an island call'd by the natives Gad-Avia, from Gad Beautiful and Avia an Isle; by the Chinese is call'd Pac-Ando, (which signifies the same) for Pac is Beautiful and Ando an Island. It is one of the most pleasant and excellent of all the Asiatick Isles, whether we consider the convenient Situation, the healthful Air, the fruitful Soil, or the curious Springs and useful Rivers, and Rich Mines of Gold and Silver wherewith it abounds; for it enjoys many advantages which other islands wants, and wants scarce of any of those which they have.

Formosa and Japan are the remotest parts towards the East which are hitherto known or discover'd, and so they are the first Countries that are visited with the Rays of the Morning Sun.

(I know you like images of exotic places. Please, have a look at my drawings of the people of Formosa)

yours sincerely,

George Psalmanazar

Mary

Dear Valeria,

Much love,

Mary Moser

Asger

Dear Valeria, 

A creative train of thought is set off by: the unexpected, the unknown, the accidental, the disorderly, the absurd, the impossible.

Best wishes,

Asger Jorn

Nizar

Valeria, ya aziza

I conquer the world with words,
conquer the mother tongue,
verbs, nouns, syntax.
I sweep away the beginning of things
and with a new language
that has the music of water the message of fire
I light the coming age
and stop time in your eyes
and wipe away the line
that separates
time from this single moment.

Love,

نزار توفيق قباني‎

Joanna

Dear Valeria,

When I was twenty I thought that life came to a point in some openly dramatic way (like in the movies) and somehow you got into adulthood at some point and then you were set, on a plateau that went on forever and ever. Remember the contralto in Pirates of Penzance, accused of being old and of having wrinkles and gray hair? And she defends herself by saying (singing, rather), "They gradually got so." When I was twenty-five and sang in the chorus, my mother laughed and laughed at that line and I wondered why.

All my best,

Joanna Russ

Georges

Dear Valeria,

In dream he whisper'd it all back to me,
Vox all a-velvet and reeking:
Liberate vostut ex inferis!
I chok'd on fear o' what I couldn't see;
Gothic mercantile type who's seeking
Mutinense simplex et eboris.

Yours sincerely,

Georges Reynolds

Carlos

Dear Valeria,

For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I want to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.

Peace,

Carlos Castañeda

Rose

Dear Valeria,

I wasn't naked, I was completely covered by a blue spotlight.

Yours most sincerely,

Gypsy Rose Lee

Louise

Dear Valeria,

The time having come, Mademoiselle, when the stern laws of men no longer bar women from devoting themselves to the sciences and disciplines, it seems to me that those who are able ought to employ this honorable liberty, which our sex formerly desired so much, in studying these things and show men the wrong they have done us in depriving us of the benefit and the honor which might have come to us. And if anyone reaches the stage at which she is able to put her ideas into writing, she should do it with much thought and should not scorn the glory, but adorn herself with this rather than with chains, rings, and sumptuous clothes, which we are not really able to regard as ours except by custom. But the honor which knowledge will bring us cannot be taken from us - not by the cunning of a thief, not by the violence of enemies, not by the duration of time.¹

Very warmest regards

Louise Labé

Karin

My dear Valeria,

If a star comes loose
and falls white through the air,
then, it is said, she answers our prayers, that reach
that short glimmering path.

I wait and wait. It is April,
a warm and sharp-eared night in April,
when the grass grows and the stars listen -
tonight they go so peacefully their way,
and not one trips and falls! 

But if I fall asleep, it matters not at all:
if a star tears itself loose tonight,
then she must feel my prayer, where she descends,
even though I sleep -
for all the silent, silent night
all of wide, wide space
is completely full of my only wish!

All the best,

Karin Boye

Teresa

Querida Valeria,

Memories do not change, and change is the law of existence. If our dead, the closest, the most beloved, were to return to us after a long absence and instead of the old, familiar trees were to find in our souls English gardens and stone walls -- that is to say, other loves, other tastes, other interests, they would gaze upon us sadly and tenderly for a moment, wiping away their tears, and then return to their tombs to rest.

Un abrazo muy fuerte,

Teresa de la Parra

Miguel

Querida Valeria,

La pluma es la lengua del alma: cuales fueren los conceptos que en ella se engendraren, tales serán sus escritos.

Con saludos cordiales,

Miguel de Cervantes

Jean-François

Chère Valeria,

Philosophy is possible only because the material ensemble called “man” is endowed with very sophisticated software. But also, this software, human language, is dependent on the condition of the hardware. Now: the hardware will be consumed in the solar explosion, taking philosophical thought with it (along with all other thought) as it goes up in flames. So the problem of the technological sciences can be states as follows: how can we provide this software with a hardware that is independent of the conditions of life on earth? That is: how can we make thought without a body possible?

Adieu!

Jean-François Lyotard

Dorothy

Dear Valeria,

Greatness is not measured by what a man or woman accomplishes, but by the opposition he or she has overcome to reach his goals.

Big hug,

Dorothy Height

James

Dear Valeria,

The bourgeois novel is the greatest enemy of truth and honesty that was ever invented. It's a vast, sentimentalizing structure that reassures the reader, and at every point, offers the comfort of secure moral frameworks and recognizable characters. This whole notion was advanced by Mary McCarthy and many others years ago, that the main function of the novel was to carry out a kind of moral criticism of life. But the writer has no business making moral judgments or trying to set himself up as a one-man or one-woman magistrate's court. I think it's far better, as Burroughs did and I've tried to do in my small way, to tell the truth.

Best,

J.G. Ballard