Ursula

Dear Valeria,

What good is a literature of dissent?

This: if you don't preach to the choir, the choir won’t keep singing. We need to hear each other’s voices. A constant, urgent need. Dissent is nothing if it doesn’t speak, and speak again.

Yours truly,

Ursula K. Le Guin

Carrie

Dear Valeria,

That’s the way it works in movies. Something happens that has an impact on someone’s life, and based on that impact, his life shifts course. Well, that’s not how it happens in life. Something has an impact on you, and then your life stays the same, and you think, “Well, what about the impact?” You have epiphanies all the time. They just don't have any effect.

Love,

Carrie Fisher

Wilfred

Dear friends,

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
      —Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
      Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
      Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
   Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
      The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
   Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
   And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Yours,

Wilfred Owen

Pablo

Querida Valeria,

Y fue a esa edad... Llegó la poesía
a buscarme. No sé, no sé de dónde
salió, de invierno o río.
No sé cómo ni cuándo,
no, no eran voces, no eran
palabras, ni silencio,
pero desde una calle me llamaba,
desde las ramas de la noche,
de pronto entre los otros,
entre fuegos violentos
o regresando solo,
allí estaba sin rostro
y me tocaba.

Siempre,

Pablo Neruda

Aretha

Dear Valeria,

Music does a lot of things for a lot of people. It’s transporting, for sure. It can take you right back, it’s uplifting, it’s encouraging, it’s strengthening.

Love,

Aretha Franklin

Peter

Dear Valeria,



From one puppetter to another,

Peter Firmin

Dick

Dear Valeria,

I am really enjoying the new MLK Jr stamp - just think about all those white bigots, licking the backside of a black man.

Peace and freedom,

Dick Gregory

Jeanne

Dear Valeria,

I shall die very young...maybe seventy, maybe eighty, maybe ninety. But I shall be very young.

Many, many kisses

Jeanne Moreau

Louise

Dear Valeria,

At the dinner table when I was very little, I would hear people bickering... To escape the bickering, I started modelling the soft bread with my fingers. With the dough of the French bread --sometimes it was still warm-- I would make little figures. And I would line them up on the table and this was really my first sculpture.

Best wishes,

Louise Bourgeois

Vivian

Dear Valeria,

Fond regards,

Vivian Maier

Janet

Dear Valeria,

So who's more adult - somebody who works like mad to avoid a problem or somebody who works like mad to solve it?

Best regards,

Janet Kagan

Leonard

Dear Valeria,

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.

LLAP,

Leonard Nimoy

Lucille

Dear Valeria,

won’t you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.

the warmest hug,
Lucille Clifton

Doris

Dear Valeria,

I was filled with such a dangerous delicious intoxication that I could have walked straight off the steps into the air, climbing on the strength of my own drunkenness into the stars. And the intoxication, as I knew even then, was the recklessness of infinite possibility.

All the best,

Doris Lessing

François

My dearest Vale,

When humor can be made to alternate with melancholy, one has a success, but when the same things are funny and melancholic at the same time, it's just wonderful.

All my love,

François Truffaut

Djuna

Dear Valeria,

I was doing well enough until you came along and kicked my stone over, and out I came, all moss and eyes.

Yours,

Djuna Barnes

Robert

Dear Valeria,

I will that as soone as I am trespassed out of this worlde that ye take my harte owte of my body, and embawme it, and take of my treasoure as ye shall thynke sufficient for that enterprise, both for your selfe and suche company as ye wyll take with you, and present my hart to the holy Sepulchre where as our Lorde laye, seyng my body can nat come there.

Lang may yer lung reek,

Robert the Bruce

Joey

Dear Valeria,



Boo!

Joseph Grimaldi

Tanith

Dear Valeria,

The entire hotel, which called itself The Queen, had a forlorn, winter appearance, and few guests. Madame Ghoule, for it had been she who interviewed me, was a formidable barrel of a woman. The interview had consisted of her terse remarks on my proposed duties, and the evidence that I looked too skinny to be able to do any of it; was I therefore strong enough? I lied that I was, which she at once accepted.

Yours,

Tanith Lee

Tommaso

Diletta Valeria,

Man lives in a double world: according to the mind he is contained by no physical space and by no walls, but at the same time he is in heaven and on earth, in Italy, in France, in America, wherever the mind's thrust penetrates and extends by understanding, seeking, mastering. But indeed according to the body he exists not, except in only so much space as is least required, held fast in prison and in chains to the extent that he is not able to be in or to go to the place attained by his intellect and will, nor to occupy more space than defined by the shape of his body; while with the mind he occupies a thousand worlds.

vostro,

Tommaso Campanella