Asking Out Love Quotes & Sayings

You're not asking me to choose you. There's no choice about it. It's always been you. Your father once told me that we always have a choice, but I think he was wrong. I think sometimes things choose us. It's like with breathing. It's natural. It's a part of us. It just happens. We can hold our breath and try not to breathe anymore, and it'll work for a few minutes, but we'll eventually pass out and nature takes over. We can't just not breathe, just like I can't just not love you. — J.M. Darhower

I love going out and it is a bit sad when the photographers stop asking you for your picture. — Alice Evans

Healing from our past is an essential aspect of expanding our sense of self and awakening our capacity to love. This shift often manifests as a change in the questions we've been asking ourselves. Instead of What do I need? we ask, How can I serve? Instead of What am I getting out of this? we start to ask, What can I bring to this situation to promote the highest possible outcome for everyone involved? — David Simon

Saints rarely have friends; they are usually hated and derided, for they love and love is always rejected by hard-hearted men ... saints do not advertise themselves; good men do not seek out a name in the world ... the saints did what they did almost in stealth, asking nothing except that men love God. — Taylor Caldwell

Now give me a kiss, say you love me and off you go."
"Sure, Aunt Lu," I said, and I gave her the kiss she wanted. Then I ran out and caught my bus. I didn't say I loved her. I guess I did. But asking someone to say they love you
and she always asked
is like buying yourself a birthday present. It's more than likely exactly what you want. But it must make you feel awfully sad to get it. — Avi

Anyhow, he say, you know how it is. You ask yourself one question, it lead to fifteen. I start to wonder why us need love. Why us suffer. Why us black. Why us men and women. Where do children really come from. It didn't take long to realize I didn't hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don't mean nothing if you don't ask why you here, period. So what you think? I ask. I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, he say, the more I love. — Alice Walker

Do you love him?"
"I wish people would stop asking me that," Celia muttered under her breath.
"What people?"
"Gran." She swallowed. "Mr. Pinter."
"Mr. Pinter?" Minerva echoed with decided interest.
"It's not what you think," Celia protested. "I hired him to find out the truth about my suitors, so he wanted to know if I was in love with any of them."
Minerva arched one eyebrow. "And why should he care?"
"That's what I said. And ever since, he's been baiting me in front of them and telling me awful things about them to blacken them in my mind."
"Even Lyons?" Minerva said.
"Well, no. I mean, I'm sure you've heard about the madness in the duke's family, but beyond that, Jackson hasn't found a single thing-"
"Jackson?"
Celia colored. "Mr. Pinter." When Minerva kept staring, she added sullenly, "We've been in each other's pockets because of the investigation. That's all. — Sabrina Jeffries

After forty-odd years you stop asking," she says. "Want some free advice?"
I nod.
"Don't trip over yourselves trying to be a perfect couple, love. Get out of each other's way; don't be afraid of falling out, shutting up, or telling little porky pies; do your share of the cleaning; don't leave your dirty undies inside out on the carpet; leave the seat down; buy her flowers once a month; and pinch her bum once a week - the rest's up to you. — Andy Jones

Another time-honored ploy: A woman is less likely to throw you out if she's offered her hospitality. If you have allergies or a cold, asking for a tissue is even better. Women love vulnerability. Most women. — Gillian Flynn

That part of the press release about me asking your father's permission to marry you was true - well, partly true, anyway. I didn't ask permission - I knew you wouldn't like that, it's sexist. You're not your father's property. But I did see him before we left, to tell him I was going to propose to you this weekend, and ask for his blessing."
I was stunned. "Wait . . . is this what you meant when you said before we left that you'd talked to my parents?"
"Yes. I spoke to your mother, too, because she played an even bigger role in raising you. I thought it was the right thing to do. How do you think you got out of doing all those events - and birthday Cirque du Soleil with your grandmother - so easily? — Meg Cabot

A month passed in silence and then came an email asking if Qayennat would care to further amend, fortify or prune various sections of her proposal; Like all communication for them so far, this was well written and polite but abhorrent in its covert attempt to stamp out anything like love, to turn passion into hot air. She wanted to tell them as much, inviting them to take their stuffy foundation and stuff it up their backside — Anjum Hasan

I've been asking around to find out what girls are into," Eugene tells me, really pleased with himself. "So I'm gonna get a spray tan and make red-velvet cupcakes. — Flynn Meaney

There are times when it seems as if God watches to see if we will give Him even small gifts of surrender, just to show how genuine our love is for Him. To be surrendered to God is of more value than our personal holiness. Concern over our personal holiness causes us to focus our eyes on ourselves, and we become overly concerned about the way we walk and talk and look, out of fear of offending God. " ... but perfect love casts out fear ... " once we are surrendered to God (1 John 4:18). We should quit asking ourselves, "Am I of any use?" and accept the truth that we really are not of much use to Him. The issue is never of being of use, but of being of value to God Himself. Once we are totally surrendered to God, He will work through us all the time. — Oswald Chambers

Good-bye,' I said to them, but they didn't seem to hear me, and why would they have wanted to? Why would they have wanted to do with the world outside of each other? Outside each other, they were mean little human beings like the rest of us, the kind of people you both loathed and pitied. Separately, they were characters, and not in a good way. But together they were something to wonder at and maybe even envy. I had this unoriginal thought as I walked out the door and toward my van: love changes us, makes us into people whom others then want to love. That's why, to those of us without it, love is the voice asking, What else? What else? And to those of us who have had love and lost it or thrown it away, then love is the voice that leads us back to love, to see if it might still be ours or if we've lost it, love is also the thing that makes us speak in aphorisms about love, which is why we try to get love back, so we can stop speaking that way. Aphoristically, that is. — Brock Clarke

She wondered whether all marriages started out this way. Whether this initial stress and adjustment, push and pull and tremors and shakes were common to all relationships. Maybe the fact that they had started off as a long-distance couple had shielded them from the pressures that normal couples in the same city went through. She wondered why all those relatives who had sat on her head asking her to get married had never mentioned this particular phase. — Shweta Ganesh Kumar

I know the package may not be ideal ... But the 'content,' those characteristics that you're looking for, are what you want ... I'm a good risk, Gina. Take a leap and make the decision that your future is with me. Trust me, trust the fact I love you. I'm not asking you to have everything sorted out and not have any doubts. I don't need that from you. What I need, what I think you need, is a yes. — Dee Henderson

This time the petition rose from deep inside her heart. Asking for the fire of the Holy Spirit to be kindled anew. And for her to reach toward God with that hunger, that yearning, that desire to know and serve and love in His name. All around her shouts of wonder and joy rang out as others received the touch they had requested in their bodies and souls. — Davis Bunn

Defriending in't just unrecognized by some social oversight, it's protected by its own protocol, a code of silence. Demanding an explanation wouldn't just be undignified; it would violate the whole tacit contract on which friendship is founded. The same thing that makes friendship so valuable is what makes it so tenuous: it is purely voluntary. You enter into it freely, without the imperatives of biology or the agenda of desire. [...] Laura Kipnis's book Against Love: A Polemic includes a harrowing eight0page inventory of things people are not allowed to do because they're in romantic relationships, from going out without saying where you're going or when you'll be back to wearing that idiotic hat. But your best friend can move across the country without asking you. — Tim Kreider

I put my pen to the paper and began to write. I'd made so many wishes for so many couples quietly in my head as they drove away, but writing the words out made it seem more real, possible. For them, and maybe for me.
FOR YOU, I WISH FOR SECOND CHANCES.

I folded it shut, then put it on the wall before I could change my mind, right above Jilly's. As Michael Salem called out to her and she started his way, I crossed the backyard, moving toward the music. When I looked back at the wish wall from a distance, it was a sea of squares: I couldn't even find mine among them. So many things we ask for, hope for, prayers put out into a world so wide: there was no way they could all be answered. But you had to keep asking. If you didn't, nothing even had a chance of coming true. — Sarah Dessen

So many things in this world were cracked and sad, and still a glowing showed through and moments came when everything was lit and love happened. Every tree stood where it belonged, each bird had perfect feathers folded against its tiny body, each holding a heart beating madly. Life was a vibration of light and dark, and love illuminated that life. Then darkness descended and your heart was ripped apart. So that was part of it, a requirement of the miracle. Death stayed, lurking in the shadow of beauty. In the bargain, life both had meaning and had none. So, she kept thinking, what to do? What to do? A pressure in her would not stop asking. There were not many things she could make better, not many things she could change. And yet ... and yet ... sparks of possibility still shot out. Unasked for, they came and randomly flew up. — Susan Minot

Someone did a study on the cell phone calls made from the Twin Towers as they fell. The question: Was there any pattern in what people said? The researcher expected they would find repeated SOSes - pleas for life, asking for absolution - but there was remarkably little of that. Instead, what the people said over and over again as they died, what they sent out across the sea of static: I love you. These words, when said sincerely, have the capacity to right our wrongs, and live on long after we have gone back to being stars. — Rosie O'Donnell

You and me?" I let out a stunned bark of laughter. "There is no you and me."
"That's what you think," Chaz says, tugging on his coat. "And I'll be damned if I'm going to wait around until you figure out that isn't true."
"Fine," I say "I'm not asking you to, am I?"
"No." Chaz is smiling ... but not like he's happy. "But you would if you had the slightest idea what was good for you."
And with that, he yanks open the door and storms through it, slamming it closed behind him with enough force to cause the windowpanes to rattle.
And then he's gone. — Meg Cabot

Perhaps that's because I do not remember a thing about the shooting. Not a single thing. The doctors and nurses offered complicated explanations for why I didn't recall the attack. They said the brain protects us from memories that are too painful to remember. Or, they said, my brain might have shut down as soon as I was injured. I love science, and I love nothing more than asking question upon question to figure out the way things work. But I don't need science to figure out why I don't remember the attack. I know why: God is kind to me. — Malala Yousafzai

Zita shrugged. "I wouldn't hold it against ya, kid. You're asking if you should choose war or love. Hate is easy, everybody does it. But most people go their entire lives without really loving. Miora's gonna tell you that you can't love her because she's zonbiri, but if it's really love . . . you won't be able to help yourself." Zita smiled and went out. — Ash Gray

It's a lot of accumulated joy and tension and all kinds of emotions just pouring out of all us. We've all been preparing for this day and we all knew that one day we would just have to move on with our lives and careers even though we all love this show and love working together. But it's still an incredibly emotional time, especially for me with a lot of journalists asking me how it feels about FRIENDS coming to an end. It's started to make me think very deeply about what it's all meant to me and that's made me ever more emotional! — Jennifer Aniston

That's when you know for sure somebody loves you. They figure out what you need and they give it to you
without you asking. — Adriana Trigiani

I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love. — Alice Walker

Oh, how an animal that is hurt looks up at you, John! An animal's actions can inform you if it is in pain. It don't hop and jump around as usual. No. You find a sad, crouching, cringing, small bunch of fur or hair, whining, and plainly asking you to aid it. It isn't hard to find out what is wrong, John; any man or woman who would pass by such a sight, just isn't worth knowing. I just can't withstand it! Why, I think that not only animals, but plants can know pain. I carry a drink to many a poor, thirsty growing thing; or, if it is torn up I put it kindly back, and fix its soil up as comfortably as I can. Anything that is living, John, is worthy of Man's aid. — Ernest Vincent Wright

Only after the words were spoken did she realize what she had said. "My sins are all your fault, Brodick, and if I have to go to purgatory, then by God, you're going with me. Ramsey, if you do not stop laughing,I swear I shall toss you over this cliff."
"Do you love him, lass?" Father asked.
"I do not," she answered emphatically.
"It isn't a requirement," Laggan pointed out.
"I should hope not," she cried.
"But it would make your life easier," he countered.
"Gillian, you will tell the truth," Brodick demanded.
He grabbed hold of her hand. She tried to pull back, but he wouldn't let go.
"I have told the truth. I don't love Ramsey, and if he doesn't stop laughing at me, the Sinclairs will soon be looking for a new laird."
"Not Ramsey," Laggan shouted so he could be heard over Ramsey's laughter. "I'm asking you if you love Brodick."
"Did you tell Father I love you? Who else did you tell? — Julie Garwood

Well - I have to say I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between 'good' and 'bad' as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can't exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how. But you - wrapped up in judgment, always regretting the past, cursing yourself, blaming yourself, asking 'what if,' 'what if.' 'Life is cruel.' 'I wish I had died instead of.' Well - think about this. What if all your actions and choices, good or bad, make no difference to God? What if the pattern is pre-set? No no - hang on - this is a question worth struggling with. What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can't get there any other way? — Donna Tartt

What to go out with me tonight after work, Vaughan?"
... "You asking me out on a date, Lydia?"
"Yes," I said. "I am."
"Babe, I'd love to." His hand rose to the back of my neck, stroking, drawing me closer. Hot damn, did he have the moves. The man turned my mind to mush.
"Something you need to know," he said. "Before tonight."
"What's that?"
"I put out on the first date," he told me with a perfectly straight face. "That okay with you?"
"Oh, I'm counting on it" ... "I mean ... it would have been so awkward if you expected me to respect you for your mind or something. Yikes, how embarrassing. Between you and me, I'm really only interested in getting into your pants."
The corner of his mouth twitched.
"I'm sure you're a nice guy and all, but, priorities, you know?"
"I know." The man's smile would have made a nun think twice. I never stood a chance. — Kylie Scott

Brooke stared in surprise. "You brought me lunch?"
"I was in the neighborhood."
She checked out the label on the bag. "DMK is twenty minutes from here."
"I was in that neighborhood, and now I'm here," he said in exasperation. "Seriously, woman, you are impossible to feed." He strode over and set the bag on her desk. "One cheeseburger with spicy chipotle ketchup and a side of sweet potato fries - chosen specifically for a certain spicy and sweet girl I know - and a green dill pickle for your eyes. So there." He crossed his arms over his chest.
Brooke studied him. "You seem very ornery right now."
"As a matter of fact, I am."
"Why?"
"I don't know," he huffed. "Just ... eat your Brooke Burger. Stop asking so many questions. Sometimes a guy just wants to buy a girl lunch. Any objections to that? Good. Enjoy your Sunday, Ms. Parker."
He strode out of her office, gone as quickly as he'd appeared.
Brooke stared at the doorway and blinked. — Julie James

Speaking of which," he murmured.
Hyacinth's mouth fell open as he dropped down to one
knee. "What are you doing?" she squeaked, frantically
looking this way and that. Lord St. Clair was surely peeking
out at them, and heaven only knew who else was, too.
"Someone will see," she whispered.
He seemed unconcerned. "People will say we're in
love."
"I - " Good heavens, but how did a woman argue
against that?
"Hyacinth Bridgerton," he said, taking her hand in his,
"will you marry me?"
She blinked in confusion. "I already said I would."
"Yes, but as you said, I did not ask you for the right reasons.
They were mostly the right reasons, but not all."
"I - I - " She was stumbling on the words, choking on
the emotion.
He was staring up at her, his eyes glowing clear and
blue in the dim light of the streetlamps. "I am asking you
to marry me because I love you," he said — Julia Quinn

Oh, Myr," he chokes out. "I hate having to ask this of you ... "
He glances towards the car again, and I crouch down in the shadows, hoping it's too dark for him to see whether the window is open or closed. The woman pats his arm, cradling her hand against his elbow.
"You know I'd do anything for you and Hil," she says. I like her voice. It's throaty and rich.
"You'd do anything?" my father repeats numbly. "Even now? After -?"
"Even now," the woman says firmly. — Margaret Peterson Haddix

Ah'll clean 'em, you fry 'em and let's eat,' he said with the assurance of not being refused. They went out into the kitchen and fixed up the hot fish and corn muffins and ate. Then Tea Cake went to the piano without so much as asking and began playing blues and singing, and throwing grins over his shoulder. The sounds lulled Janie to soft slumber and she woke up with Tea Cake combing her hair and scratching the dandruff from her scalp. It made her more comfortable and drowsy. — Zora Neale Hurston

I'm saying I love you, Cami. All of that was as real for me as it was for you. I'm asking if you'll stick this out beside me. I'm willing to lose my badge and even be dishonorably discharged if that's the case. I just don't want to lose you. — Lacey Weatherford

You ask yourself "What is love? Am I in love?", when what you should be asking is, "What is not love?", ma petite. What is it that this man does for you that is not done out of love? — Laurell K. Hamilton

We had been texting for exactly thirteen minutes, asking random questions, trying to figure out if we knew any of the same people, or if we liked the same kind of music--the usual interview process you go through when you're trying to get the job as boyfriend. — Jason Reynolds

I began by asking myself, "What do I want out of life?" And the answer was happiness. Investigating further, I went into the moment when I was feeling happiest. I discovered something which to me was startling at the time. It was when I was loving that I was happiest. That happiness equated to my capacity to love rather than to being loved. That was a starting point. — Lester Levenson

So," he said as we turned onto the main road, the muffler rattling, "I've been thinking."
"Yeah?"
He nodded. "You really need to go out with me."
I blinked. "I'm sorry?"
"You know. You, me. A restaurant or movie. Together." He glanced over, shifting gears. "Maybe it's a new concept for you? If so, I'll be happy to walk you through it."
"You want to take me to a movie?" I asked.
"Well, not really," he said. "What I really want is for you to be my girlfriend. But I though saying that might scare you off. — Sarah Dessen

How could I tell him that I now wanted what he had once wanted
to travel on trains and fall in love with girls with dark eyes and extravagant lips? It didn't matter to me if at the end of it I had nothing to show but sore thighs. It wasn't my fault that the life of the wanderer, the wayfarer, had fallen out of favor with the world. So what if it was no longer acceptable to drift with the wind, asking for bread and a roof, sleeping on bales of hay and enjoying dalliances with barefooted farmgirls, then running away before the harvest? This was the life I wanted, blowing around like a leaf with appetites. — Steve Toltz

The water can't turn back and choose another bed, just as promises now cannot be kept. No drowned man comes up again asking for a towel, no love is found again, no tobacconist fails to be born in the first place, no bullet shoots out of a neck and back into the gun, the dam will hold or will not hold. — Sasa Stanisic

But most of all he liked to listen to stories of real life. He smiled gleefully as he listened to such stories, putting in words and asking questions, all aiming at bringing out clearly the moral beauty of the action of which he was told. Attachments, friendships, love, as Pierre understood them, Karataev had none, but he loved and lived on affectionate terms with every creature with whom he was thrown in life, and especially so with man- not with any particular man, but with the men that happened to be before his eyes.
But his life, as he looked at it, had no meaning as a separate life. It only had meaning as part of a whole, of which he was at all times conscious. — Leo Tolstoy

Is he good? Or is he bad? That's the only thing I ask nowadays. And as I grow older - I'd swear this on the last crust I eat - I feel I shan't even go on asking that! Whether a man's good or bad, I'm sorry for him, for all of 'em. The sight of a man just rends my insides, even if I act as though I don't care a damn! There he is, poor devil, I think, he also eats and drinks and makes love and is frightened, whoever he is: he has his God and his devil just the same, and he'll peg out and lie as stiff as a board beneath the ground and be food for worms, just the same. Poor devil! We're all brothers! All worm-meat! — Nikos Kazantzakis

If they're beautiful I don't much mind if they're not true. It's asking a great deal that things should appeal to your reason as well as to your sense of the aesthetic. I wanted Betty to become a Roman Catholic, I should have liked to see her converted in a crown of paper flowers, but she's hopelessly Protestant. Besides, religion is a matter of temperament; you will believe anything if you have the religious turn of mind, and if you haven't it doesn't matter what beliefs were instilled into you, you will grow out of them. Perhaps religion is the best school of morality. It is like one of those drugs you gentlemen use in medicine which carries another in solution: it is of no efficacy in itself, but enables the other to be absorbed. You take your morality because it is combined with religion; you lose the religion and the morality stays behind. A man is more likely to be a good man if he has learned goodness through the love of God than through a perusal of Herbert Spencer." This — William Somerset Maugham

People try to reconcile you to a disappointment in love by asking why you should cherish a passion for an object that has proved itself worthless. Had you known this before, you would not have encouraged the passion; but that having been once formed, knowledge does not destroy it. If we have drank poison, finding it out does not prevent its being in our veins: so passion leaves its poison in the mind! — William Hazlitt

Cope's bot can string together notes that weave in and out with the power of Beethoven or the finesse of Mozart. That a machine can produce things of such beauty is threatening to many in the music community. "If you've spent a good portion of your life being in love with these dead composers and along comes some twerp who claims to have this piece of software that can move you in the same way, suddenly you're asking yourself, 'What's happened here?'" Cope says. "I'm messing with some very powerful relationships. — Christopher Steiner

God put us here to go through this kind of mental gymnastics, and He certainly put us here to enjoy our sexual lives. He put us here to ask, to try and find out the best way possible to live with our neighbors. Of course, you can go through a life not asking, and that's the tragedy: so many lives lived in moral blindness. — Dorothy Day

Where do babies come from? Don't bother asking adults. They lie like pigs. However, diligent independent research and hours of playground consultation have yielded fruitful, if tentative, results. There are several theories. Near as we can figure out, it has something to do with acting ridiculous in the dark. We believe it is similar to dogs when they act peculiar and ride each other. This is called "making love". Careful study of popular song lyrics, advertising catch-lines, TV sitcoms, movies, and T-Shirt inscriptions offers us significant clues as to its nature. Apparently it makes grown-ups insipid and insane. Some graffiti was once observed that said "sex is good". All available evidence, however, points to the contrary. — Matt Groening

Except they kept asking me questions like 'What is your biggest source of conflict about the Pope?' Or 'Has the Pope ever tried to suppress your scientific work?' Completely out of left field!
"They didn't want to hear me tell them how much Pope Benedict supported the Vatican Observatory and its scientific work. So, finally, frustrated that they weren't getting the story they wanted out of me, one of them asked, 'Would you baptize an extraterrestrial?'
"What did you answer?"
"Only if she asks!"
"I love it! How did they react?"
"They all got a good laugh, which is what I intended. And then, the next day, they all ran my joke as if it were a straight story, as if I had made some sort of official Vatican pronouncement about aliens. — Guy Consolmagno

I'm thinking that after last night you shouldn't have to spend your morning in a hospital finding out if my mother has tried to OD."
"And I'm thinking that after last night I want to be anywhere you are and if that means being in a hospital asking about your mother, then so be it. — Melina Marchetta

Quinn hesitated, then said what his heart demanded."Lizzy, even if you don't believe, I will still be your friend. Nothing is going to change that. I'm loyal to my friends for a lifetime. There are no qualifications."
She just looked at him for a long time, and then the smile that could make his heart roll over appeared. She got to her feet and lightly tapped his arm with the sombrero. "You're forgiven for asking me out fourth."
She would have passed him but he snagged her hand. "Lizzy."
She stopped.
"I saved the best for last. — Dee Henderson

When I think about the things that cause me pain or the things that cause me trouble or frustration, it's not people asking for my autograph; it's people breaking my heart. That happens to you whether you've sold millions of records or whether you're taking classes at college. You're going to believe people when they say that they love you. I don't leave out details when I write songs about that. I try to make my songs as personal as possible because, ultimately, my music started out as just trying to turn my diary entries into something that was a piece of music. And that has never changed. — Taylor Swift

Positive energy is your priceless life force. Protect it. Don't allow people to draw from your reserves; select friends who recharge your energies ... I'm not asking you to cut people out of your life, but I am asking you to invest your time with people who will push you to be your best. Winners love to see other people win. — Chalene Johnson

It may be uncomfortable to express your own thoughts and feelings. It may also be uncomfortable to hear the truth of someone else's current thoughts and feelings. But those thoughts and feelings should never be suppressed. The only way that anyone can be in a real relationship is if those current truths are out on the table. Otherwise we can not really love the person we think we love, because we don't even see the truth of who they are in this moment. We are in essence, in love with an illusion. We are in essence, asking people to love an illusion of ourselves unless we are willing to be vulnerable and open enough to show them the truth of who we are in this moment. — Teal Scott

Don't cheat people out of loving you, and love them back - right where they stand. And if they turn away, let you down, leave you feeling mocked ... Well, you'll survive the true fools of the world. You'll grow wise from the experience, if you don't hide yourself away.
Live with your heart wide-open. The one thing you must know, to avoid falling into cynicism, is this:
Be careful of asking for nothing at all - because that's what you'll end up with. — Jenna Brooks

A good story, you'd have said, is like our river Drina: never calm, it doesn't trickle along, it is rough and broad, tributaries flow in to enrich it, it rises above its banks, it bubbles and roars, here and there it flows into shallows but then it comes to rapids again, preludes to the depths where there's no splashing. But one thing neither the Drina nor the stories can do: there's no going back for any of them. The water can't turn back and choose another bed, just as promises now can't be kept. No drowned man comes up again asking for a towel, no love is found again, no tobacconist fails to be born in the first place, no bullet shoots out of a neck and back into the gun, the dam will hold or will not hold. The Drina has no delta. — Sasa Stanisic

I steal into their dreams," he said. "I steal into their most shameful thoughts, I'm in every shiver, every spasm of their souls, I steal into their hearts, I scrutinize their most fundamental beliefs, I scan their irrational impulses, their unspeakable emotions, I sleep in their lungs during the summer and their muscles during the winter, and all of this I do without the least effort, without intending to, without asking or seeking it out, without constraints, driven only by love and devotion. — Roberto Bolano

We are not asking everyone to do everything. We are simply asking all members to pray, knowing that if every member, young and old, will reach out to just "one" between now and Christmas, millions will feel the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. And what a wonderful gift to the Savior. — M. Russell Ballard

My entire life, all I ever wanted was you to be real. Then I came here, and found out that you were. That first day I found out you were real, the first time I saw your face and heard your voice, it was all I could ever asked for. Everything else after that has been a gift I could never dream of deserving, would never thought of asking you. Learning to know you, for real, being with you every day ... I want you to know that I never thought I could be so happy. Being with you is the definition of happiness I have. — Sarah Rees Brennan

This time, I sat next to a pixie girl called Takara, who had pinkish hair and wore a bright pink dress to match. She was the first forest-dweller I had seen wearing jewellery: she was wearing a necklace and bracelet of finely worked crystal beads. When she noticed my interest, she removed her bracelet and held it out to me.
"Sophiel, I would be so pleased if you would wear this!"
I was surprised by this kind and very selfless gesture; after all, I had not been admiring her jewels with any intention of asking her to part with them!
"You're very kind, Takara, but I was merely admiring your handiwork!" I said, trying politely to refuse her gift. "Mitsuko told me that you make your jewellery yourself. You're very talented, they're really lovely pieces, but I wouldn't want to take them away from you. It's you that makes these jewels really beautiful! — A.O. Esther

Oh, God, Francesca,Now there's a good one.Why?Why? Why?" He gave each one a different tenor, as if he were testing out the word, asking it to
different people.
"Why?" he asked again, this time with increased volume
as he turned around to face her.
"Why? It's
because I love you, damn me to hell. Because I've always loved you. Because I loved you when you
were with John, and I loved you when I was in India, and God only knows I don't deserve you, but I
love you, anyway."
Francesca sagged against the door.
"How's that for a witty little joke?" he mocked. "I loveyou. I loveyou, my cousin's wife. I loveyou, the
one woman I can never have. I loveyou, Francesca Bridger-ton Stirling. — Julia Quinn

Hence it's funny to read in the New York Times that liberal Catholic activists are pushing for a change in Church teaching on issues relating to -- well, let's admit it, sex. Nobody is out there demanding the popes revisit the condemnation of Jansenism (don't ask), or settle the question of whether divine grace is or isn't resistable. No, journalists want to know what the Church thinks about whether one person should poke another and, if so, where, when, and how. What liberal Catholics and the journalists who love them are really asking for isfor the Church to admit that it was teaching a set of harsh, repressive errors for nineteen centuries and that now it is very, very sorry. — John Zmirak

Besides the mistakes that are pointed out, I love the way readers become involved with the characters. When readers start asking about character motivations instead of concentrating on the special effects, it means you're connecting with them on a personal level. — Alan Dean Foster

Give me another chance," I ask urgently. "I will do anything that you want me to do if you just tell me that we can start again. I know I don't deserve it, but I'm asking anyway. I honestly don't know if I can breathe without you. Please. I love you, Mila. Please tell me we can work it out. — Courtney Cole

How quickly bodies came to love each other, promise themselves to each other always, without asking permission. From the mind! If only she could give up her mind, let her heart swell, inflamed, her brain stepping out for whole days, whole seasons, her work shrinking to limericks. — Lorrie Moore

A complete stranger
a giant pancake, no less
has just appeared in their home," Boyd said. "Why isn't anyone reacting to this? Wouldn't they be screaming in terror?"
"They love pancakes," Stan said.
"What would they do if a fried chicken leg walked in?"
"I'm not sure a chicken leg could walk in," said the script supervisor, a lady who wore three layers of shirts and sucked on a pencil as if it were a pacifier. "I suppose it could hop."
Stan looked over his shoulder at her. "let me handle this." He turned back to Boyd. "The family knows you. You're not just another pancake off the street. You're a celebrity pancake, the Jay Leno of breakfast foods. Would anyone throw Leno out of their house?"
"Okay, assuming you're right, I'm a pancake asking this family to eat me. Am I suicidal or simply filled with self-loathing?"
"Take your pick," Stan said. "Whatever will get you through the scene. — Janet Evanovich

We all have had a crush at one time or another in our lives. Sometimes, a crush is something that lives only within our hearts, bound never to see the light of day. Other times, having a crush on someone leads eventually to asking them out, dating, and even marriage. — Simeon S. Willis

We pissed each other off, royally and frequently in those early days. But we were getting better, bit by bit. I stopped thinking he was going to cage me and he stopped thinking I was trying flee. The poetry was not lost on us. He had abandonment issues and I had commitment issues. Go figure. Also, the sex which had been fumbling and awkward at the beginning of the relationship got really hot, we figured that was a promising sign general relationship progress.
Mostly though we realized it was about leaving the doors and windows of the relationship wide open. That way he could see in, and I could see out. — Amanda Palmer

Meanwhile Canon Leigh in his study did not know what on earth he ought to do; and when he remembered that he had four daughters who each of them might have five love affairs, making twenty all told, before he got them safely steered into the harbor of matrimony
though even then there might be upsets in the harbor
he came out in a cold sweat. He spent a bad night and in the cold light of dawn sat down and penned a note to Mistress Flowerdew, asking that he might wait upon her and receive her inestimable advice upon a matter of overwhelming importance. — Elizabeth Goudge

Be the queen of my castle. The proud wearer of my plaid. The one to feed me when I hunger, and not just for blood. For everything. Love, sex, companionship. I want ye to be the one. My one." "You're asking an awful lot. What do I get out of this?" "Ye want more? I'm giving you my heart. My love. My loyalty and my life. What more do you want?" She knew the answer to that one thanks to Sasha. "I want forever. — Eve Langlais

Straight guys only feel three ways about girls ... First, either they love you, and they show it by writing a song about you, like Gabriel, and asking you out, and everything is nice and fun like it should be. Second, they love you, but they're scared of their passion for you because it's so strong, like your boy Christopher, so they stuff it way, way down and ignore you, or do stupid things like make fun of you because they don't know how to express it any other way, because they're immature little babies and are too shy to, say, write a song about you. Or third, there's something wrong with them, and they start out nice and loving and then turn around and do stupid things like sleep with other girls behind your back, like Justin Bay. But we'll never figure out what went wrong with them, and neither will they, so it's not worth thinking about. Okay? That's it. The end.
Lulu Collins — Meg Cabot