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Quote by Linda Olsson

“My aloneness had never bothered me; I hadn't even been aware of it. But now it overwhelmed me. The awareness washed over me with painful sharpness and deep grief. Now that I had company.”

Quote by Linda Olsson

Work

The Memory of Love

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Author

Linda Olsson
Linda Olsson

Linda Olsson, born in 1948, is a renowned author whose works span various literary genres. She is admired for her profound insights and unique narrative style. more

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“You once said that you would like to sit beside me while I write. Listen, in that case I could not write at all. For writing means revealing oneself to excess; that utmost of self-revelation and surrender, in which a human being, when involved with others, would feel he was losing himself, and from which, therefore, he will always shrink as long as he is in his right mind-- for everyone wants to live as long as he is alive-- even the degree of self-revelation and surrender is not enough for writing. Writing that springs from the surface of existence-- when there is no other way and deeper wells have dried up-- is nothing, and collapses the moment a truer emotion makes the surface shake. That is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why there can never be enough silence around one when one writes, why even night is not night enough.”

“The Infinite It was always dear to me, this solitary hill, and this hedgerow here, that closes out my view, from so much of the ultimate horizon. But sitting here, and watching here, in thought, I create interminable spaces, greater than human silences, and deepest quiet, where the heart barely fails to terrify. When I hear the wind, blowing among these leaves, I go on to compare that infinite silence with this voice, and I remember the eternal and the dead seasons, and the living present, and its sound, so that in this immensity my thoughts are drowned, and shipwreck seems sweet to me in this sea.”

“In the world of the dreamer there was solitude: all the exaltations and joys came in the moment of preparation for living. They took place in solitude. But with action came anxiety, and the sense of insuperable effort made to match the dream, and with it came weariness, discouragement, and the flight into solitude again. And then in solitude, in the opium den of remembrance, the possibility of pleasure again. What was she seeking to salvage from the daily current of living, what sudden revulsions drove her back into the solitary cell of the dream?”

“You are at my side, dear friends, and God is everywhere. Yet ultimately we are alone, making our way home by the candle of the heart. The light is steady and sure but extends only far enough to see the next step. Many times the light seems to go out. But another light, one held by a stranger or friend, a book or a song, a blackbird or a wild flower, comes close enough so that we can see our path by its light. And in time we realize that the light we have borrowed was always our own.”