Michael’s Reviews > Letters to Felice > Status Update

I am more likely to achieve peace of mind through writing than the capacity to write through peace.

I love you, Felice, with everything that is good in me as a human being, with everything in me that makes me deserving of being astir among the living. If it isn’t much, then I am not much.

At the risk of ruining your Sunday, I am sending you my most recent photograph, and three copies at that, since I think I have discovered in larger quantities it loses some of its horror.

[T]his letter will arrive on New Year's morning, and will usher in a New Year that should be wholly ours... I am going to buy a calendar with a lovely picture for each day, and every morning in my letter I shall enclose the page with the date of the letter's arrival and have it placed on your desk... we shall [...] live facing the same calendar page, and this will make my life seem sweeter.

For your birthday I of all people must not wish you anything, for although there probably are things one could urgently wish for you, they would at the same time be directed against me — and so I cannot express them; what I could say would be sheer self-interest. To make sure that, as needs be, I do not say anything and express no wish, allow me this once, and only in my imagination, to kiss your beloved lips.