♥️ ͜ ♥️

Why don’t typewriters make little hearts?????

— from a letter by Anne Sexton to Tillie Olsen circa February 14, 1965 collected in A Self-Portrait in Letters

I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile–some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket, which I would now like to trace in reply to your question.

— Vladimir Nabokov’s answer to a question Alden Whitman sent in April 1969 for an interview that appeared in The New York Times April 19 1969 and also collected in Strong Opinions