I’ve never lived before | Leo Tolstoy, 1869

“Well, dear heart, I wanted to tell you yesterday, and I’ve come to tell you today. I’ve never experienced anything like it. I’m in love, my friend… I’d never have believed it, but this feeling is stronger than I am. Yesterday I was tormented, I suffered, but I wouldn’t trade that torment for anything in the world. I’ve never lived before. Only now am I alive, but I can’t live without her. But can she love me?… I wouldn’t have believed it if someone had told me I could love so much. It’s quite a different feeling from what I knew before. The whole world is divided for me into two parts: one is she, and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other is where she is not, and there everything is dejection and darkness. I can’t help loving the light, it’s not my fault. And I’m very happy.”

Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, 1869 (Prince Andrei Nikolaevich Bolkonsky)

Tolstoy’s notes from the ninth draft of War and Peace, 1864