I am full of love for every one. And everything is soft and vague and very sad. It is sad, it is sad. But everything has meaning (…)

∆ Virginia Woolf, from The Complete Works

I don’t know why I’m so happy today. It’s unexplainable. It’s like being in love. I’m not (in love) but my spirits are doing well by me. I soar. Partly it’s the weather and the lack of having to hide from the sun. The autumn beginning…the sad autumn of the yellow leaves. I feel very alive.

∆ Anne Sexton, from a letter to Alfred Sexton written c. September 1963