“There are certain shocks which, if sufficiently strong, seem to have power to destroy the balance of life. Such a shock would seem to overthrow all the intricate, vital, slowly developed mechanism of mind, to plunge the victim into a… — Anna Kavan Copy Share Image
At last I feel identified with the mountains, clean, cold, hard, detached. — Anna Kavan Copy Share Image
“There is, I believe, a kind of telepathy between the condemned: a sort of intuitive recognition which can even make itself felt through the medium of the printed page. How else should I feel—without fear of appearing presumptuous, either—for this great man whom I never saw and to whom I could not have spoken, the tender, wincing, pathetic solicitude that… — Anna Kavan Copy Share
I had a friend, a lover. Or did I dream it? So many dreams are crowding upon me now that I can scarcely tell… — Anna Kavan Copy Share Image
“It was always the same now, the ghost always coming between her and her life in the world, so much more important, since that… — Anna Kavan Copy Share Image
“Their eyes met for a moment. And the glance that flickered between them had been a wordless message of understanding, the affirmation of a sympathetic secret alliance from which everyone else was excluded by natural law - the close mysterious blood-bond between two mutants, of which she had not yet heard. But, in some indescribable fashion, it had seemed, even… — Anna Kavan Copy Share
“She looked, and saw the black, domed sky arching over her head. And her heart dilated; she felt the great black dome in her heart. She sat under the stars, worshipping them. Her heart opened and grew vast, until the whole sky with all its stars began to pour into her, a mysterious flood of star-strung darkness. She wanted to… — Anna Kavan Copy Share
“An intolerable pain pierced him. He was totally lost without her...estranged from his life utterly, and from the world. This was the world into which he'd been born; the only world he would ever know. Yet nowhere in it did he feel the slightest degree at home. She was his home...his one sanctuary upon earth...the only place of safety for… — Anna Kavan Copy Share
“Her albino hair illuminated my dreams, shining brighter than moonlight.” — Anna Kavan Copy Share Image
“In a polished surface of metal I happen to notice my reflected face; it wears a pale, beaten lonely look, eyes looking out at nothing with an expression of fear, frightened and lonely in a nightmare world. Something, I don’t know what, makes me think of my childhood; I remember myself as a schoolchild sitting at a hard wooden desk,… — Anna Kavan Copy Share
Because of my fear that the daytime world would become real, I had to establish reality in another place. — Anna Kavan Copy Share Image
“All at once I feel desperate, outraged. Why am I alone doomed to spend nights of torment, with an unseen jailer, when all the rest of the world sleeps peacefully? By what laws have I been tried and condemned, without my knowledge, and to such a heavy sentence, too, when I do not even know of what or by whom… — Anna Kavan Copy Share
