Adelaide: There’s no such thing as forever. Don’t you know that, darling? The voice fades. The memory fades. Things go in and out of fashion. Time goes on, and all of us, eventually, are forgotten.
Emily: …I want to be famous… I write and write poem after poem, and then I stick it in a drawer, and it just sits there in the dark, where no light shines. I mean, that isn’t enough.
Adelaide: Is it?
Emily: Don’t they need to be seen? Don’t I need to be… seen?
Adelaide: I don’t know. If you’re seen, then you’re exposed. Everything that’s exposed, well, it goes stale… The critics, they’ll put you on top for a minute, but then they’ll drag you down.
Emily: Well, who cares what they say? Who cares what people think.
Adelaide: Exactly. Might as well stay in a room by yourself with no one watching. …What is it that you really want? What is the deeper yearning you have? Beneath all of this nonsense about fame, what is it that you crave? You crave meaning. You crave beauty. You crave love.
— Dickinson (S2: E6)