5 November 1918 Good night, most beautiful –

4 December 1910 Unnecessary to tell you that I am of a sovereign laziness and that nothing less than a monsoon would make me abandon my divan

July 1919 I went to a horrible dance, and (thought I say it and shouldn't) I was what I consider quite the best-looking and the best-dressed person there –

I often think you're like Lady Macbeth. Or Judith

25 August 1918 I can’t exist without you, you are my affinity, the intellectual ‘pendent’ to me, my twin spirit.

8 October 1910 I am in the act of asking myself if I ought to reply to your question? A question furthermore most indiscreet and which merits a sharp reprimand. Reply, don’t reply, reply! Oh to the devil with discretion!

21 October 1918 All the frills and furbelows, conceits and coquetries have vanished utterly, leaving my love gloriously and brutally naked, to take or leave – as you will.

8 July 1919 Men tiliche, I hardly slept at all last night. I thought of you

31 October 1910 Understand, Miss, that I am not afraid of you (only the Unforeseen frightens me)

March 1919 Sometimes I am flooded by an agony of physical longing for you . . . a craving for your nearness and your touch. At other times I feel I should be quite content if I could only hear the sound of your voice.

5 May 1919 The more I think of marriage, the further removed from it I feel! It is an institution that ought to be confined to temperamental old maids, weary prostitutes, and royalties!

1918 How you would adore this place! The gardens are one mass of blue hydrangeas, and fuschias grow abundantly wild, as in Ireland. There are superimposed ‘layers’ of coastline, like the drop scene of a theatre . . . all wasted because you are not here to see it

really, do understand, you exasperate me when you make yourself so – dumb! – excuse the epithet.

9 May 1919 I want you, I desire you, in addition to everything else, as I have never desired anyone in my life.

11 September 1910 If you are very good and we are not all drowned in the Red Sea, devoured by mosquitoes or carried off by monkeys I will bring you back some sapphires, pearls and rubies to have made into something for your outward adornment.

22 July 1918 For 16 nights I have listened expectantly for the opening of my door, for the whispered ‘Lushka’ as you entered my room, and tonight I am alone. What shall I do? How can I sleep?

19 April 1919 All my life I have been lonely. I never knew what it was to have companionship till I met you.

4 May 1920 I try in vain to drive this tyrannous, all-absorbing love from my heart, but it returns undaunted, imperishable, to rage and storm through me like the wind through a roofless house.

23 August 1920 And Vita – of course, it would too wonderful if Vita came here. She is so beautiful and clever.

When I'm dead we'll always be together. My ashes will be scattered around the world. When I die I'll be able to travel for nothing.