Quotes & Sayings About Being So In Love With Him

What have you talked about then?" Alec didn't like how jealous he sounded, but it couldn't be helped. Ever since Charlie had come home he didn't know how to feel about her. It was impossible to just wipe out all the love he'd carried for her for so many years, every time he looked at his sons he saw her in them. He had tried to move on, he had moved on, but a part of him would always love her. Everything he had learnt about being a man, a lover, a true friend, a father; all these things he had learnt with her right by his side. She had made him her constant in a world where she had never known true stability, and he had loved her all the more for it.
But just as it was impossible to stop loving her, the same could be said when it came to hating her. He f*** ing hated her. He loved her with the same intensity of hating her. — K. Carr

The way I see Jesus has not changed much at all since I was a child, but my imprisonment and all that followed made me love Him even more. His being the Son of God makes sense to me, because I believe God to be loving, just, forgiving, and merciful. I also believe that He respects free will. After all, He has given it to us so that we can choose to love or hate Him, do good or evil. But is it fair for a loving God to sit on His throne in Heaven and let us struggle and suffer on our own? Would any good father abandon His children this way? It makes perfect sense to me that God decided to come among us, live like us, and die a horribly painful death after being tortured. This is a God I can love with all my heart. A God who sets an example. A God who has bled and whose heart has been broken. This is who Jesus is to me. I don't pretend that I understand the Holy Trinity. But I understand love and sacrifice. I understand faithfulness. — Marina Nemat

... in that moment, as he saw and smelled how irresistible its effect was and how with lightning speed it spread and made captives of the people all around him - in that moment his whole disgust for humankind rose up again within him and completely soured his triumph, so that he felt not only no joy, but not even the least bit of satisfaction. What he had always longed for - that other people should love him - became at the moment of his achievement unbearable, because he did not love them himself, he hated them. And suddenly he knew that he had never found gratification in love, but always only in hatred - in hating and in being hated. — Patrick Suskind

I got the feeling Poseidon really didn't know what to think of me. He didn't know whether he was happy to have me as a son or not. In a strange way, I was glad that Poseidon was so distant. If he'd tried to apologize, or told me he love me, or even smiled. it would've felt fake. Like human dad, making some lame excuse for not being around. I could live with that. After all, I wasn't sure about him yet, either. — Rick Riordan

Love is an afternoon of fishing when I'd sooner be at the ballet.
Love is eating burnt toast and lumpy graving with a big smile.
Love is hearing the words 'You're beautiful' as I fail to squeeze into my fat jeans.
Love is refusing to bring up the past, even if doing so would be a slam dunk to prove your point.
Love is your hand wiping away my tears, trying to erase streaks of mascara.
Love is the warm hug that extinguishes an argument.
Love is a humbly-uttered apology, even if not at fault.
Love is easy to recognize but so hard to define; however, I think it boils down to this ...
Love is caring so much about the feelings of someone else, you sacrifice whatever it takes to help him or her feel better.
In other words, love is my heart being sensitive to yours. — Richelle E. Goodrich

These three or four scriptures also have been great refreshments in this condition to me: John xiv. 1-4; John xvi. 33; Col. iii. 3, 4; Heb. xii. 22-24. So that sometimes when I have been in the savour of them, I have been able to laugh at destruction, and to fear neither the horse nor his rider. I have had sweet sights of the forgiveness of my sins in this place, and of my being with Jesus in another world: Oh! the mount Sion, the heavenly Jerusalem, the innumerable company of angels, and God the Judge of all, and the spirits of just men made perfect, and Jesus, have been sweet unto me in this place: I have seen that here, that I am persuaded I shall never, while in this world, be able to express: I have seen a truth in this scripture, Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now you see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory. 1 Pet. i. 8. — John Bunyan

You have told yourself that you have found your knight in shining armor, my brother Rick. Isn't that the truth? You met him and he fit the bill, so you have told yourself a wonderful story and, stubborn brat that you are, you have been clinging to it ever since. After all, what could be more appropriate than for Francesca Cahill, reformer extraordinaire, to fall in love with my reform-minded Republican brother? But wait! Being as this is a love story, there has to be an unhappy middle and the perfect hero isn't quite so perfect after all. For he is married. Oh, wait! It isn't that bad, after all, for as it turns out he is a man of virtue, and he really loves you, while he despises his wife! And did I forget to mention that she is vile and evil? So the story can limp along, and true love might survive after all! Does this sound at all familiar, Francesca?"
"I almost hate you," she whispered. And she felt a tear sliding down her cheek. — Brenda Joyce

They tell the story of a man who's drowning in his love for a woman. Drowning, but he can still breathe fine. The woman's flawed, but to him, she's perfect. She makes his head spin. She's distracting and inspiring. And he's so enamored with her that every part of him loves for every part of her. It's a song about being open, about having no barriers. About loving with "all of me" and asking for "all of you" in return. — Laurelin Paige

You can't tell that the coffin holds the body of a boy.
He wasn't even sixteen but his coffin's the same size as a man's would be.
It's not just that he was young, but because it was so sudden. No one should die the way he did; that's what the faces here say.
I think about him, in there, with all that space, and I want to stop them. I want to open the box and climb in with him. To wrap him up in a duvet. I can't bear the thought of him being cold.
And all the time the same question flails around my head, like a hawkmoth round a light-bulb: Is it possible to keep loving somebody when they kill someone you love? — C.J. Flood

But his love is greater than all our hate and he will not rest until Judas has turned to him, until Satan has turned to him, until dark has turned to him; until we can all, all of us without exception, freely return his look of love with love in our own eyes and hearts. And then, healed, whole, complete but not finished, we swill know the joy of being co-creators with the one to whom we call.
Amen. Even so, come Lord Jesus. — Madeleine L'Engle

I feel good with my husband: I like his warmth and his bigness and his being-there and his making and his jokes and stories and what he reads and how he likes fishing and walks and pigs and foxes and little animals and is honest and not vain or fame-crazy and how he shows his gladness for what I cook him and joy for when I make him something, a poem or a cake, and how he is troubled when I am unhappy and wants to do anything so I can fight out my soul-battles and grow up with courage and a philosophical ease. I love his good smell and his body that fits with mine as if they were made in the same body-shop to do just that. What is only pieces, doled out here and there to this boy and that boy, that made me like pieces of them, is all jammed together in my husband. So I don't want to look around any more: I don't need to look around for anything. — Sylvia Plath

I had my arms around his waist, smiling as I looked up at him. Being with Alex made me so completely happy, in an easy, uncomplicated way that I hadn't felt since I was a small child. "I love you," I said. In the five days we'd been there, it was the first time I'd said the words to him in English; they just slipped out.
Alex's expression went very still as he looked down at me, his dark hair stirred by the slight breeze. I picked up a sudden wave of his emotions, and they almost brought tears to my eyes. Gently, he took my face in his hands and kissed me.
"I love you, too," he said against my lips. — L.A. Weatherly

For the more skeptical of the Victorians, love performed some of the functions of the God whom they had lost. Faced with it, many of even the most hard-headed turned, for the moment; mystical. They found themselves in the presence of something which awoke in them that sense of reverence which nothing else claimed, and something to which they felt, even in the very depth of their being, that an unquestioning loyalty was due. For them love, like God, demanded all sacrifices; but like Him, also, it rewarded the believer by investing all the phenomena of life with a meaning not yet analysed away. We have grown used - more than they - to a Godless universe, but we are not yet accustomed to one which is loveless as well, and only when we have so become shall we realise what atheism really means. — Bertrand Russell

You do know, right,
that between the no-

longer & the still-
to-come

you are being continually
tattooed, inked

with the skulls of
everyone

you've ever loved - the you
& the you

& the you & the you - you don't
sit in a chair, thumb

through a binder, pick a
design, it simply

happens each time you
bring your fingers to your face

to inhale him back into you . . .
tiny skulls, some of us are

covered. You, love, could

simply tattoo an open
door, light

pouring in from somewhere
outside, you

could make your body a door
so it appears you

(let her fill you) are made
of light. — Nick Flynn

Viktor was swinging a leather duffle and wearing a black Adidas tracksuit and his favorite brown UGG slippers with a hole in the toe.
"Worn and old, just like Viv," he'd say when Frankie made fun of them, and then his wife would swat him on the arm. But Frankie knew he was just joking, because Viveka was the type of woman you wished was in a magazine just so you could stare at her violet-colored eyes and shiny black hair without being called a stalker or a freak. — Lisi Harrison

That's when you fall in love with somebody. The lust and fucking like rabbits and letting your life fall to shit so you can be around him - that's passion. It's borderline obsession. And it always burns itself out. You know that, Liddie. That high never, ever lasts. But being in that hospital, taking care of him, I started to realize that what I had with Paul, what I thought I had, that was more than love. That was being in love. It was so tangible I could almost touch it with my hands. I could bite it with my teeth. — Karin Slaughter

And I remember when I met him.
It was so clear that he was the only one for me.
We both knew right away.
And as the years went on things got more difficult,
We were faced with more challenges.
I begged him to stay,
Tried to remember what we had in the beginning.
He was charismatic, magnetic, electric, and everybody knew him
When he walked in every woman's head turned.
Everyone stood up to talk to him.
He was like this hybrid, this mix of a man who couldn't contain himself.
I always got the sense that he became torn between being a good person and missing out on all of the opportunities that life could offer a man as magnificent as him.
And in that way, I understood him.
And I loved him, I loved him, I loved him, I loved him.
And I still love him, I love him. — Lana Del Rey

Military weapons are the means used by the Sage to punish violence and cruelty, to give peace to troublous times, to remove difficulties and dangers, and to succor those who are in peril. Every animal with blood in its veins and horns on its head will fight when it is attacked. How much more so will man, who carries in his breast the faculties of love and hatred, joy and anger! When he is pleased, a feeling of affection springs up within him; when angry, his poisoned sting is brought into play. That is the natural law which governs his being — Sima Qian

Alyosha, was not at all a fanatic, and, in my view at least, even not at all a mystic. I will give my full opinion beforehand: he was simply an early lover of mankind,1 and if he threw himself into the monastery path, it was only because it alone struck him at the time and presented him, so to speak, with an ideal way out for his soul struggling from the darkness of worldly wickedness towards the light of love. And this path struck him only because on it at that time he met a remarkable being, in his opinion, our famous monastery elder Zosima, to whom he became attached with all the ardent first love of his unquenchable heart. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Many there are who, not comprehending, not being affected with, that divine, spiritual description of the person of Christ which is given us by the Holy Ghost in the Scripture, do feign unto themselves false representations of him by images and pictures, so as to excite carnal and corrupt affections in their minds. By the help of their outward senses, they reflect on their imaginations the shape of a human body, cast into postures and circumstances dolorous or triumphant; and so, by the working of their fancy, raise a commotion of mind in themselves, which they suppose to be love unto Christ. — John Owen

Of course I want you," she said right in his ear. "I love you." He let loose some kind of hoarse word, and his arms crushed her to him. As she found herself not being able to breathe because he was squeezing her so tight, she thought, Yup, this really was him. And he wasn't going to let her go this time. Thank. God. As he held Jane up off the ground, Vishous was wholly happy. Complete in a way that having all your fingers and toes couldn't hold a candle to. With a shout of triumph, he carried her into her condo, pausing only to put the garage door down. — J.R. Ward

If you're not filled back up quickly, you might collapse like a birthday balloon". I guess that's why acting is so addictive. For the director, that addiction will come from the love and trust he gets from the "orchestra", him being the conductor. That's why many directors fall in love with their leading lady/man: having someone say "how do you want me to be" is incredible. — Matthew Jacobs

Since the will has never tasted God as he is or known him through some gratification of the appetite, and consequently does not know what God is like, it cannot know what the pleasure of God is; nor can its being, appetite, and satisfaction know how to desire God, for he transcends all its capacity. Thus it is obvious that none of all those particular things in which it can rejoice is God. In order to be united with him, the will must consequently be emptied of and detached from all disordered appetite and satisfaction with respect to every particular thing in which it can rejoice, whether earthly or heavenly, temporal or spiritual, so that purged and cleansed of all inordinate satisfactions, joys, and appetites it might be wholly occupied in loving God with its affections. For if in any way the will can comprehend God and be united with him, it is through love and not through any gratification of the appetite. — San Juan De La Cruz

What you don't ever catch a glimpse of on your wedding day - because how could you? - is that some days you will hate your spouse, that you will look at him and regret ever changing a word with him, let alone a ring and bodily fluids. And nor do you think about your husband waking up in the morning being someone you don't recognize. If anyone thought about any of these things, then no one would ever get married. In fact, the impulse to marry would come from the same place as the same impulse to drink a bottle of bleach, and those are the kind of impulses we try to ignore rather than celebrate.
So we can't afford to think of these things because getting married - or finding a partner whom we will want to spend our lives with and have children by - is on our agenda. It's something we know we will do one day, and if you take that away from us then we are left with promotions and work and the possibility of a winning lottery ticket, and it's not enough. — Nick Hornby

Would you really fight for him?" I nod.
But the nod isn't enough, so I go on.
"In fact, I would tear through rubble with my bare hands to get to him. I would lift cars. I would wrestle down anyone who said we shouldn't be together. I would stare down life and kick it in the ass if I had to. Because if you want to know the truth
if you really want to know the truth
none of that could be nearly as hard as being in love with him and not being able to tell anyone about it. Including him. I have this thing inside me, and it's angry and it's scared and it's uncertain and most of all it's so completely in love with him, and it would do anything to keep him, even if it means things staying the way they are now. — Nina LaCour

It is of no use mincing the matter; Dr John Marsh, after being regarded by his friends at home as hopelessly unimpressible - in short, an absolute woman-hater - had found his fate on a desolate isle of the Southern seas, he had fallen - nay, let us be just - had jumped over head and ears in love with Pauline Rigonda! Dr Marsh was no sentimental die-away noodle who, half-ashamed, half-proud of his condition, displays it to the semi-contemptuous world. No; after disbelieving for many years in the power of woman to subdue him, he suddenly and manfully gave in - sprang up high into the air, spiritually, and so to speak, turning a sharp somersault, went headlong down deep into the flood, without the slightest intention of ever again returning to the surface. — R.M. Ballantyne

I can't impose on my friends for too long. I'm not sure what to do." He tipped her face up and brushed a kiss across her lips. "You'll marry me, of course. As soon as it can be arranged." Her pulse skipped, and she pulled back. "Right away?" His eyes were smiling and full of love. "I'd marry you tomorrow if we could arrange it that quickly." The thought of being a family with him and Edward brought heat rushing to her cheeks. "I'd like that more than anything in the world," she said. "Tell me what to do and I'll arrange it." "There are so many things to do, I don't know where to start," she said, laughing. The smile left his face. "When, my love?" The possessiveness in his voice heated her cheeks even more. "I need at least two weeks. I have to make a dress." "I'll buy you one." "I want to make it. I'll only have one wedding day. — Colleen Coble

I asked Geertrui the other day what she thought love is-real love, true love. She said that for her real love is observing another person and being observed by another person with complete attention. If she's right, you only have to look at the pictures Rembrandt painted of Titus, and there are quite a lot, to see that they loved each other. Because that is what you're seeing. Complete attention, one of the other ... "but in that case," he said, speaking the words as the thought came to him, "all art is love, because all art is about looking closely, isn't it? Looking closely at what's being painted."
"The artist looking closely while he paints, the viewer looking closely at what has been painted. I agree. All true art, yes. Painting, Writing-literature-also. I think it is. And bad art is a failure to observe with complete attention. So, you see why I like the history of art. It's the study of how to observe life with complete attention. It's the history of love. — Aidan Chambers

She never indulged in reveries or tried to be clever in her conversation; she seemed to have drawn a line in her mind beyond which she never went. It was quite obvious that feelings, every kind of relationship, including love, entered into her life on equal terms with everything else, while in the case of other women love quite manifestly takes part, if not in deeds, then in words, in all the problems of life, and everything else is allowed in only in so far as love leaves room for it. The thing this woman esteemed most was the art of living, of being able to control oneself, of keeping a balance between thought and intention, intention and realization. You could never take her unawares, by surprise, but she was like a watchful enemy whose expectant gaze would always be fixed on you, however hard you tried to lie in wait for him. High society was her element, and therefore tact and caution prompted her every thought, word, and movement. — Ivan Goncharov

But I love you, Trixie said. There was no easy switch that she could flip to stem the flow of feelings, no way to drain the memories that pooled like acid in her stomach because her heart no longer knew what to do with them. She couldn't blame Jason; she didn't like herself like this, either. But she couldn't go back to being the girl she'd been before she met him; that girl was gone. So where did that leave her? — Jodi Picoult

I was very curious, that's why I think my reality TV seems normal. I watch a lot of reality TV because I am so interested in people and observing people. From a very young age I can remember watching a woman with a guy and she's rolling her eyes and he's pleading with her and I would think, she doesn't want to be with him, he's in love with her, she likes this other guy and I would make up these stories in my head about these people. That helps me sort of profile people and that is a key to being able to read people. — Daniel Negreanu

Just as God's love to us believers, his children, is unalterably the same, whatever may be the manifestations of that love; and as his peace with us is the same, however much our peace may be disturbed; so it is also with regard to our being in fellowship or partnership with him: it remains unalterably the same so far as God is concerned. — George Muller

I'm the drummer for Stage Dive." Mat set the crazily expensive camera on the seat beside him. "You can't order me around, child bride."
"It's so cute that you think that's still funny, calling me child bride." From her back jean pocket, Ev pulled out her cell. "Am I calling Anne to tattle on you for refusing to give Jimmy and Lena some privacy or not?"
"You wouldn't dare."
Her fingers moved across the screen. "Oh, I think I would."
David and Ben chuckled in ther manly way, but did as told and went back into the recording studio. They clearly weren't messing with the girl.
A second later, Mal followed. "I do not like you women all being friends. This is not okay."
"And you should tell your grilfriend all about it when you see her tonight. I'd love to know what she says." With a final wave, Ev followed him back inside the mixing room or whatever it was called. — Kylie Scott

In the case of Michel Angelo we have an artist who with brush and chisel portrayed literally thousands of human forms; but with this peculiarity, that while scores and scores of his male figures are obviously suffused and inspired by a romantic sentiment, there is hardly one of his female figures that is so, - the latter being mostly representative of woman in her part as mother, or sufferer, or prophetess or poetess, or in old age, or in any aspect of strength or tenderness, except that which associates itself especially with romantic love. Yet the cleanliness and dignity of Michel Angelo's male figures are incontestable, and bear striking witness to that nobility of the sentiment in him, which we have already seen illustrated in his sonnets. — Edward Carpenter

You know, Qhuinn's an interesting character." Saxton reached out with an elegant hand and picked up his port. "He's one of my favorite cousins, actually. His nonconformity is admirable and he's survived things that would crush a lesser male. Don't know that being in love with him would be easy, however."
Blay didn't go near that one. "So do you come here often?"
Saxton laughed, his pale eyes glinting, "Not for discussion, huh. — J.R. Ward

When I introduced you to Mary Ann, I wanted to call you my girlfriend, Elli," he looked up at her to see her eyes were wide, "I've never had a girlfriend, so I'm not sure if I'll do the boyfriend/girlfriend thing right, but the thought of you being with someone else, or me with someone else, actually hurts my gut, so I guess what I'm trying to say is," he took a deep breath, this was huge, and he thought he sounded stupid but with the way her eyes were glazing over, maybe he was doing this right. "I was wondering if you wanted to be my girlfriend." She smiled at him lovingly, cupping his face in her hands.
"Are you sure? I'm kinda crazy." He laughed, kissing her palm.
"I'm sure."
"Then, yes, Shea, I would love to be your girlfriend. — Toni Aleo

Do not despair, thinking that you cannot change yourself after so many years. Simply enter into the presence of Jesus as you are and ask him to give you a fearless heart where he can be with you. You cannot make yourself different. Jesus came to give you a new heart, a new spirit, a new mind, and a new body. Let him transform you by his love and so enable you to receive his affection in your whole being. — Henri Nouwen

You get your freedom by not being confined. You get freedom by letting your enemy know that you'll do anything to get your freedom. You'll get it. It's the only way you'll get it ... So dont you run around here trying to make friends with somebody who's depriving you of your rights. They're not your friends. No, they're your enemies. Treat them like that and fight them, and you'll get your freedom. And after you get your freedom, your enemey will respect you. He will respect you. I say that with no hate. I have no hate in me. I don't have any hate, but I've got some sense ... I'm not going to let somebody who hates me to tell me to love him. I'm not that way out. — Malcolm X

In the case of the solitary, his seclusion, even when it is absolute and ends only with life itself, has often as its primary cause a disordered love of the crowd, which so far overruled every other feeling that, not being able to win, when he goes out, the admiration of his hall-porter, of the passers-by, of the cabman whom he hails, he prefers not to be seen by them at all, and with that object abandons every activity that would oblige him to go out of doors. — Marcel Proust

He was aware, suddenly, of the chill condensing clammily on his skin, the smell of damp cobblestones, of the very air flowing in and out of his lings.
But most of all he was aware of the woman, this woman, his woman, standing so proudly, waiting patiently for him, only him.
He walked toward her and knew with every fiber of his being that he walked to life itself. — Elizabeth Hoyt

If you have people who treat you badly in your life, they will be a human shield against people who will treat you well. If that's not true then we should apply it to marriage and start saying to woman who are being put down or beaten, "you gotta stay with him because he needs you and he has been your husband for 20 years for heaven sakes. You just have to work to love him more and so on." This is the advice they gave to woman like 200 fucking years ago and it was abusive advice.
I view the parent child relationship (This just not my made up perspective.) it is the least voluntary relationship. At least the woman who got married chose to get married. We don't choose our parents. The highest standards of behavior are required for parents and no one else. There is no one else whose standards of behavior need be higher than parents and so often parents get away with the lowest possible standards of behavior with regards to their children. — Stefan Molyneux

Somewhere in the world there was a young woman with such splendid understanding that she'd see him entire, like a poem or story, and find his words so valuable after all that when he confessed his apprehensions she would explain why they were in fact the very things that made him precious to her ... and to Western Civilization! There was no such girl, the simple truth being. — John Barth

She could just distinguish his features, as he slept the perfect sleep. In this darkness, she seemed to see him so distinctly. But he was far off, in another world. Ah, she could shriek with torment, he was so far off, and perfected, in another world. She seemed to look at him as at a pebble far away under clear dark water. And here was she, left with all the anguish of consciousness, whilst he was sunk deep into the other element of mindless, remote, living shadow-gleam. He was beautiful, far-off, and perfected. They would never be together. Ah, this awful, inhuman distance which would always be interposed between her and the other being! There was nothing to do but to lie still and endure. She felt an overwhelming tenderness for him, and a dark, under-stirring of jealous hatred, that he should lie so perfect and immune, in an other-world, whilst she was tormented with violent wakefulness, cast out in the outer darkness. — D.H. Lawrence

Maybe being with Cade was a need ... my body needed him more than I realized. He was a part of me, whether I wanted him to be or not. We fit together, in every sense, perfectly. Yes, he had a drinking problem, and I possessed low self-esteem ... but together ... together we were amazing. We could do anything, go anywhere. Our lives were destined to cross, not just once, but twice. It wasn't just coincidence, or Cade's dad, that allowed us to meet again after so many years. It was much more. The universe had made us for each other, and it was time I stop fighting it. — Felicia Tatum

My children, mark me. I pray you. Know! God loves my soul so much that his very life and being depend upon his loving me, whether he would or no. To stop God loving me would be to rob him of his Godhood; for God is love no less than he is truth; as he is good, so is he love as well. It is the absolute truth, as God lives ... If anyone would ask me what God is, I should answer: God is love, and so altogether lovely that creatures all with one accord essay to love his loveliness, whether they do so knowingly or unbeknownst, in joy or sorrow. — Meister Eckhart

There are some people who, in order not to pray use as an excuse the fact that life is so hectic that it prevents us from praying. This cannot be. Prayer does not demand that we interrupt our work, but that we continue working as if it were a prayer. It is not necessary to always be in meditation, nor to consciously experience the sensation that we are talking to God, no matter how nice that would be. What matters is being with Him, living in Him, in His will. To love with a pure heart, to love everybody, especially to live the poor, is a twenty-four hour prayer. — Mother Teresa

He stayed with her for so long because he liked the idea of being in love. He has an empty well in his heart that needs to be filled by someone. Anyone. But that's not enough for me, and it won't be enough for him either once he finally realizes the truth. — Stephanie Perkins

It seems that a profound, impartial, and absolutely just opinion of our fellow-creatures is utterly unknown. Either we are men, or we are women. Either we are cold, or we are sentimental. Either we are young, or growing old. In any case life is but a procession of shadows, and God knows why it is that we embrace them so eagerly, and see them depart with such anguish, being shadows. And why, if this
and much more than this is true
why are we yet surprised in the window corner by a sudden vision that the young man in the chair is of all things in the world the most real, the most solid, the best known to us
why indeed? For the moment after we know nothing about him.
Such is the manner of our seeing. Such the conditions of our love. — Virginia Woolf

And in all those escapes he could not help being astonished by the beauty of this land that was not his. He his in its breast, fingered its earth for food, clung to its banks to lap water and tried not to love it. On nights when the sky was personal, weak with the weight of its own stars, he made himself not love it. Its graveyards and its low-lying rivers. Or just a house - solitary under a chinaberry tree; maybe a mule tethered and the light hitting its hide just so. Anything could stir him and he tried hard not to love it. — Toni Morrison

Barret thinks- he thinks, briefly- of turning around and leaving the park; of being, this time, the vanisher, the man who leaves you wondering, who offers no explanation, not even the sour satisfaction of a real fight; who simply drifts away, because (it seems) there's affection and there's sex but there's no urgency, no little hooks clasping little eyes; no binding, no dogged devotions, no prayers for mercy, not when mercy can be so easily self-administered. What would it be like, Barrett wonders, to be the other, the man who's had the modest portion he thinks of as enough, who slips away before the mess sets in, before he's available to accusation and recrimination, before the authorities start demanding of him When, and Why, and With Whom — Michael Cunningham

About Thomas Hobbes: He was 40 years old before he looked on geometry; which happened accidentally. Being in a gentleman's library, Euclid's Elements lay open, and "twas the 47 El. libri I" [Pythagoras' Theorem]. He read the proposition "By God", sayd he, "this is impossible:" So he reads the demonstration of it, which referred him back to such a proposition; which proposition he read. That referred him back to another, which he also read. Et sic deinceps, that at last he was demonstratively convinced of that truth. This made him in love with geometry. — John Aubrey

Women are indoctrinated from infancy about beauty. We feel we must be Superwoman and have it all: beauty, brains, a good work ethic, great with children, a good cook. The list is long, isn't it? I think it's particularly hard for women to accept the unconditional love God offers. We are so used to being held to such a high standard - and failing - that we feel we can never measure up. What a blessing when we realize that we don't have to. God loves us, warts and all. We are safe in his arms. Safe to tell him our dreams, our fears, our failings. Safe to relax in his unconditional love. — Colleen Coble

I do not think I have ever experienced so strange a feeling in my life (I am wiser now, perhaps) as that of being with them, remembering how they had been employed, and seeing them enjoy the ride. I was not angry with them; I was more afraid of them, as if I were cast away among creatures with whom I had no community of nature. They were very cheerful. The old man sat in front to drive, and the two young people sat behind him, and whenever he spoke to them leaned forward, the one on one side of his chubby face and the other on the other, and made a great deal of him. They would have talked to me too, but I held back, and moped in my corner; scared by their love-making and hilarity, though it was far from boisterous, and almost wondering that no judgement came upon them for their hardness of heart. So, when they stopped to bait the horse, and ate and drank and — Charles Dickens

It was impossible to imagine a time when [Fielding's] dry wit wouldn't be around to make me laugh, or to imagine someone else being the one to see the joy on his face when he learned something new. I thought about all of that, and then I thought about never holding him again, never kissing him again, never again experiencing Fielding pushy and demanding and needing me so bad he trembled with it.
And man, it fucking hurt.
"Okay," I said out loud, swallowing hard. "Okay, I give. Uncle."
It was time to admit defeat, to lay down my cards, and concede the game.
For the first time in my life, I was in love. I was in love with a guy. I was in love with Fielding Monroe. — Eli Easton

And why are you so firmly, so triumphantly, convinced that only the normal and the positive
in other words, only what is conducive to welfare
is for the advantage of man? Is not reason in error as regards advantage? Does not man, perhaps, love something besides well-being? Perhaps he is just as fond of suffering? Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being? Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

She had to think seriously about Carver and Dannon. Dannon was well under control - he'd been her security man for four years, and for all four years had hungered for her. Not just for sex. He was in love with her. That was useful. Carver was cruder. He didn't want her total being, he just wanted to fuck her. If she wasn't available, somebody else would do. So her grip on him was more precarious. — John Sandford

You didn't want to put in the work to make us happen.
It was true. I had been so captivated by Duncan, so enamored, so infatuated, that I let his life drown mine for two years. I went along, and when I got tired of it, tired of it just being easy and comfortable and convenient but not love, I ended it. And that was why I had the man in my lobby looking at me like there were still places for us to go.
I had let him believe that he was my whole world, let him be everything, and then one day just stopped loving him and walked away. It was something I did, something I had always done - poured on the charm, made myself into the ideal partner, lover, friend, indispensable and irreplaceable, and then, when I got bored or tired or tapped out, instead of fighting, I just quit. It was wildly unfair, and the only people I didn't do it with were my family. Even my friends complained that I was always around and then just gone.
Nathan Qells — Mary Calmes

She'd seen them on the news, compassionate Americans talking about how the United States should be more welcoming to people who came in peace. She believed these kindhearted people, like Natasha, would never betray them, and she wanted to tell Jende this, that the people of Judson Memorial Church loved immigrants, that their secret was safe with Natasha. But she also knew it would be futile reasoning with a raging man, so she decided to sit quietly with her head bowed as he unleashed a verbal lashing, as he called her a stupid idiot and a bloody fool. The man who had promised to always take care of her was standing above her vomiting a parade of insults, spewing out venom she never thought he had inside him. For the first time in a long love affair, she was afraid he would beat her. She was almost certain he would beat her. And if he had, she would have known that it was not her Jende who was beating her but a grotesque being created by the sufferings of an American immigrant life. — Imbolo Mbue

His hands as he worked were deft and sure, but so gentle
he was being careful not to hurt me any more than he had to. I sat very still, hardly daring to move.
I was in love with him.
The knowledge swept through me, truer than anything I'd ever known. Oh, my God, I was in love with him. — L.A. Weatherly

That his prayer was nothing else but a sense of the presence of GOD, his soul being at that time insensible to everything but Divine love: and that when the appointed times of prayer were past, he found no difference, because he still continued with GOD, praising and blessing Him with all his might, so that he passed his life in continual joy; yet hoped that GOD would give him somewhat to suffer, when he should grow stronger. — Brother Lawrence

Hence the aim of meditation, in the context of Christian faith, is not to arrive at an objective and apparently 'scientific' knowledge of God, but to come to know him through the realization that our very being is penetrated with his knowledge and love for us. Our knowledge of God is paradoxically a knowledge not of him as the object of our scrutiny, but of ourselves as utterly dependent on his saving and merciful knowledge of us. It is in proportion as we are known to him that we find our real being and identity in Christ. We know him and through ourselves in so far as his truth is the source of our being and his merciful love is the very heart of our life and existence. We have no other reason for being, except to be loved by him as our Creator and Redeemer, and to love him in return. There is no true knowledge of God that does not imply a profound grasp and an intimate personal acceptance of this profound relationship. — Thomas Merton

Every time the phone rang, my heart jumped. Was it Alexander? And when it wasn't him my heart would break into a million pieces. It had been two longs days since I had seen my Gothic mate. I was so preoccupied with Alexander, dreaming of the next time we'd be together, nothing else mattered. I didn't wash the spot where his tender love lips had pressed against my flesh. I was acting like I was straight out of a Gidget movie! What had happened to me? I was losing my edge! For the first time in my life I was really afraid. Afraid of never seeing him again and afraid of being rejected. — Ellen Schreiber

Standing over his bed, watching him sleep, Luce could see it. The way their love would have bloomed here.She could see Lucia coming in to bring Daniel his meals,him opening up to her slowly. The pair being inseparable by the time Daniel recovered. And it made her feel jealous and guilty and confused because she couldn't tell right now whether their love was a beautiful thing, or whether this was yet another instance of how very wrong it was.
If she was so young when they met, they must have had a long relationship in this life.She would have gotten to spend years with him before it happened. Before she died and was reincarnated into another life completely. She must have thought they'd spend forever together-and must not even have known how long forever meant.
But Daniel knew.He always knew. — Lauren Kate

He wasn't like some of the hippies in England, where the qualification to rebel is planted by the guilt raised from being a spoilt child with a good education. He was a real hippy born from being forced to kill for his army until he was twenty one. He had long hair because the army made him shave his head. The army made him shave every day too. Now he had a beard. His face for a long time was not his own. When this guy said he was all about peace he wasn't talking about peace because his mum never got him the horse he wanted for his eighteenth birthday, he was talking about peace because he'd seen war. He talked about love because he knew hate: hate for those above him, hate for those he had served with, hate for enemies not born his but who became so and, lastly, hate for himself for how his mind had been controlled. — Craig Stone

What you can't do is leave me!"
He was thrown back. There were still six crewmen standing against him. That wasn't deterring him in the least, however, which only infuriated her the more. The fool man was going to get tossed in the river yet.
She might do it herself. She was, after all, fed up with being told what she could or couldn't do. "And why can't I leave you?"
"Because I love you!"
He hadn't even paused in throwing another punch to shout that. Georgina, however, went very still, and breathless, and nearly sat down on the deck, her knees had gone so weak with the incredible emotion that welled up inside her. — Johanna Lindsey

But that is the nature of true grace and spiritual light, that it opens to a person's view the infinite reason there is that he should be holy in a high degree. And the more grace he has, and the more this is opened to view, the greater sense he has of the infinite excellency and glory of the divine Being, and of the infinite dignity of the person of Christ, and the boundless length and breadth and depth and height of the love of Christ to sinners. And as grace increases, the field opens more and more to a distant view, until the soul is swallowed up with the vastness of the object, and the person is astonished to think how much it becomes him to love this God and this glorious Redeemer that has so loved man, and how little he does love. And so the more he apprehends, the more the smallness of his grace and love appears strange and wonderful: and therefore he is more ready to think that others are beyond him. — Jonathan Edwards

screen filled with symbols, only this time it was Arabic letters that meant nothing to him. He assumed they meant nothing to Raj as well, and was therefore surprised when Raj pointed out a short sequence. "This is the word for 'person' or 'human being'." Daniel stared at Raj. "You know Arabic?" "No, not really. I have read Nizar Qabbani in translation, and this word is a particularly beautiful shape, is it not?" "Still waters run deep, Raj. So you read Arabic love poetry. I wouldn't have ever guessed." Raj blushed. "Sushma is more woman than I can handle without help," he admitted. "Qabbani writes more than just love poetry. It is quite erotic. — J.C. Ryan

I really liked it." She covers her mouth in horror.
"If I like sex, do you think it means I can't be a feminist?"
"No." I shake my head. "Because being a feminist
I think it means being in charge of your sexuality. You decide who you want to have sex with. It means not trading your sexuality for ... other things."
"Like marrying some gross guy who you're not in love with just so you can have a nice house with a picket fence."
"Or marrying a rich old geezer. Or a guy who expects you to cook him dinner every night and take care of the children," I say, thinking of Samantha.
"Or a guy who makes you have sex with him whenever he wants, even if you don't," Miranda concludes.
We look at each other in triumph, as if we've finally solved one of the world's great problems. — Candace Bushnell

Ah, but it wasn't just her lovely face that haunted him. Nor the soft, lush body he was increasingly desperate to see liberated from that woolen cocoon. It was the way she'd so willingly owned up to the truth. The way her spirit had sparked when he'd told her to put aside her art. The way she'd practically made sweet, innocent love to him with her eyes when he'd said he cared if she lived or died.
Good Lord. The laughable irony of it. He'd wasted weeks of his adolescence memorizing sonnets, spent years perfecting little murmured innuendos. Only to learn the most seductive phrase in the English language was something akin to: All things being equal, I'd rather not see you mauled by a shark. — Tessa Dare

Valerie, I love you so much. I wanted you to have a normal
childhood - so I lived a double life. Hiding in plain
sight. Living modestly." He began to pace the room, the
words tumbling out of him. "I tried to keep it up, but I've
been so disrespected. Even by my own wife. I couldn't do it
anymore. I've settled for far less than I deserved, and I just
couldn't do it anymore. I decided it was time to leave for
the city....For richer hunting grounds." Cesaire was snarling
now, a scary, powerful force. Valerie felt herself being
drawn to it....
She took a deep, steadying breath. It was not just fear
that she felt. What she felt was so much more complex
than that, something she couldn't understand. "Then why
didn't you just go?"
"Because I loved you girls, and I wanted you to come
with me. To share the wealth."
"But you had to wait until the blood moon. — Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

He swore by all that he ever had loved and reverenced that he would try, try with all his might in the short time that might remain to him ... he would forget himself, he would put his own pain and chagrin and disappointment, his own feeling of defeat and uselessness, his own craving for love and intellectual companionship in the background, and he would see if the more than six feet of bone and muscle that contained his being could do any small service that might come his way for God and his fellow man before he went. Maybe if he could accomplish some little thing, something that would ease the ache of even one heart that ached as his was aching at that minute, just maybe that knowledge would be the secret that he might carry in his breast that would set the stamp of an indelible smile on his face, so that even a child could discern the majesty of the impulse and he would not be ashamed when the end came. — Gene Stratton-Porter

I observed an eighteen-year-old friend of one of our daughters talking to his mother on the telephone. As he hung up the phone in frustration he said, "She makes me so angry, she's always telling me what to think and where to go and how to do things." He was obviously upset and filled with anger. I told him he had one of two choices. He could either continue to practice being right, or practice being kind. If you insist on being right you will argue, get frustrated, angry, and your problem will persist with your mom, I explained. If you simply practice being kind, you can remind yourself that this is your mom, she's always been that way, she will very likely stay that way, but you are going to send her love instead of anger when she starts in with her routine. A simple statement of kindness such as, "That's a good point, Mom, I'll think about it," and you have a spiritual solution to your problem. — Wayne W. Dyer

Well, first I tried just telling her the truth. That if you kiss her, you'll die. She started crying hysterically."
"Oh, good thinking," I say, lifting the cup of hot chocolate to my mouth. Why hadn't I thought of that right off?
"Yeeeah, turns out not so much. I thought that might have worked since, you know, she's supposedly in love with you, but then being a total psychopath and all, she started blubbering, 'I'd rather have one perfect passionate kiss with Haden and lose him forever, than to have never kissed him at all.'"
I almost choke on a sip of hot chocolate. It burns my throat. — Bree Despain

This is the thing, I think often, that never occurs to you when you consider what it would be like to lose someone you love. That you would miss not just the flowers and kisses, but the totality of the experience. You miss the failures and little evils with as much desperation as you miss being held in the middle of the night. I wish he were here now, and I was kissing him. I wish he were here now, and I was betraying him. Either would be fine, so fine, as long as he was here. — Cody McFadyen

Compassion is the feeling of sympathy which the pain of one being awakens in another; and the higher and more human the beings are, the more keenly attuned they are to re-echo the note of suffering, which, like a voice from heaven, penetrates the heart, bringing all creatures a proof of their kinship in the universal God. And as for man, whose function it is to show respect and love for God's universe and all its creatures, his heart has been created so tender that it feels with the whole organic world ... mourning even for fading flowers; so that, if nothing else, the very nature of his heart must teach him that he is required above everything to fe the brother of all beings, and to recognize the claim of all beings to his love and his beneficence.
Horeb, Chapter 17, Verse 125 — Pirkei Avot

I'm glad you're gay," she said solemnly, "because that way, if I can't have you, no one can."
"Um, Rocher," I mentioned, "like, a dude could have him."
This had never occurred to Rocher because she'd thought that Jate being gay translated as, "I love Rocher Bargemueller so much but I don't deserve her so I'll never have sex again." The concept of Jate with a guy was fresh turf and Rocher regarded him with an especially deranged sparkle in her eyes.
"I could be a dude," she said. — Paul Rudnick

Since God knows created beings as the realizations of His will, it is not being itself but the ultimate will of God's love which unifies beings and points to the meaning of being. And precisely here is the role of the incarnation. The incarnate Christ is so identical to the ultimate will of God's love, that the meaning of created being and the purpose of history are simply the incarnate Christ. All things were made with Christ in mind, or rather at heart, and for this reason irrespective of the fall of man, the incarnation would have occurred. Christ, the incarnate Christ, is the truth, for he represents the ultimate unceasing will of the ecstatic love of God, who intends to lead created being into communion with His own life, to know Him and itself within this communion-event. — John D. Zizioulas

Aren't you afraid, though?" Ayumi asked Aomame.
"Afraid of what?"
"Don't you see? You and he might never cross paths again. Of course, a chance meeting could occur, and I hope it happens. I really do, for your sake. But realistically speaking, you have to see there's a huge possibility you'll never be able to meet him again. And even if you do meet, he might already be married to somebody else. He might have two kids. Isn't that so? And in that case, you may have to live the rest of your life alone, never being joined with the one person you love in all the world. Don't you find that scary?
Aomame stared at the red wine in her glass. "Maybe I do," she said. "But at least I have someone I love. — Haruki Murakami

Boys from my generation all love Jim Carrey! But you know, just being in his house with him and pitching jokes that he would act out, literally felt like the dreams that I had, so it was amazing. — John Francis Daley

Jai, she pleaded quietly, if you hadn't noticed, I'm a guts and glory kind of girl. I think I'd die trying to protect anyone I care about. It's just the way I'm wired, I guess. I would die trying to protect Charlie because I love him. He's my family, and I don't want to lose any more family." She took another step so her body pressed flushed to him, her fingers falling to his lips. The sound of his shallow breathing emboldened her. "But Jai ... I would die a hundred deaths to save you ... because the thought of being here without you now, the thought of losing you ... is unimaginable." Their eyes locked and heat bloomed in her cheeks as Jai pressed closer to her, his hand sliding across her lower back and gently guiding her even more tightly against him. "Jai, you have no idea how much I've fallen in love with you. I don't think a person could fall any harder. — Samantha Young

He wanted to be loved for being just what he was. In this community of Yskalnari there was harmony, but no love.
He no longer wanted to be the greatest, strongest or cleverest. He had left all that far behind. He longed to be loved just as he was, good or bad, handsome or ugly, clever or stupid, with all his faults - or possibly because of them.
But what was he actually?
He no longer knew. So much have been given to him in Fantastica, and now, among all these gifts and powers, he could no longer find himself. — Michael Ende

I couldn't stop crying because it was so intimate, in that way I always thought being physical with him would feel. If someone had walked in they might have thought Henry was barely touching me. I knew the truth of it.
He was laying me open and bare to him and to God.
There wasn't a more intimate act. I would never recover from this. — Laura Anderson Kurk

While I'd been plagued by nightmares of Jonathan's unrest in the hereafter, it was only now that I'd seen Adair again - and seen him so changed - that I could admit, even to myself, that it was him I daydreamed of, who I longed for, who I ached for, physically. That was how I'd betrayed Luke - in my desire for Adair. It wasn't so uncommon, was it? Living with one man while your mind is on another? Being unable to stop thinking of this other man who, for one reason or another, was not the one sitting beside you. Thinking of the way his eyes lit up when he saw you, of his wicked smile and what it was like when he held you, how you responded to the touch of his hands. In solitary moments, you remembered the little intimacies, the feel of his skin against yours, the way he liked to be touched, the velvet nap of his member, the way he tasted. You thought of him even though you could never be with him. His absence nagged like an itch you could never scratch. — Alma Katsu

Don't you see? You and he might never cross paths again. Of course, a chance meeting could occur, and I hope it happens. I really do, for your sake. But realistically speaking, you have to see there's a huge possibility you'll never be able to meet him again. And even if you do meet, he might already be married to somebody else. He might have two kids. Isn't that so? And in that case, you may have to live the rest of your life alone, never being joined with the one person you love in all the world. Don't you find that scary? — Haruki Murakami

He smiled all the way to physics class. He almost laughed out loud when he passed through the door and saw her shadowy, hunched-over form casting around for a seat in the back.
She was in his class; this was excellent. Maybe she'd call him a name if he struck up another conversation. Even curse him out. That might fun. God, he'd probably earn himself a restraining order if he tried to sit next to her.
He was so tired of saccharine smiles and cloying tones of voice. People always plastered their eyes to his face for fear of looking anywhere else. He was fed up with everybody being so goddamned nice.
That's why he'd already fallen in love with this weird, maladjusted, beautiful girl who carried a chip the size of Ohio on her shoulder. Because nobody was ever mean to the guy in the wheelchair. — Francine Pascal

What we love is too much in the past, consists too much in the time that we have spent together for us to require the whole woman; we wish only to be sure that it is she, not to be mistaken as to her identity, a thing far more important than beauty to those who are in love; her cheeks may grow hollow, her body thin, even to those who were originally most proud, in the eyes of the world, of their domination over beauty, that little tip of a nose, that sign in which is summed up the permanent personality of a woman, that algebraical formula, that constant, is sufficient to prevent a man who is courted in the highest society and is in love with her from being free upon a single evening because he is spending his evenings in brushing and entangling, until it is time to go to bed, the hair of the woman whom he loves, or simply in staying by her side, so that he may be with her or she with him, or merely that she may not be with other people. — Marcel Proust

I'd write and read and let myself, a little at a time, step down into myself- like a stairway down into a dark, intimate kiva- where the work of vigil is taking place, the necessary attending. I imagine there's a little fire burning in there, a few steadily glowing embers, and a quiet chant going on, from me, from some singer in me, honoring and accompanying W's soul, which is with him as he is making his passage..there's a leavetaking in process, a movement towards increasing simplicity, away from complexity, activity, expectation. The bout of paranoia, with a childlike quality of being threatened, seems part of that-like a day or two when he couldn't just let go and float on the energies of other people, who are bearing him up-but had to doubt them, struggle. So much better when he can trust and float. There's enough love around him to carry him now ... — Mark Doty

THE PROJECTIONIST
The projectionist can make you believe whatever she believes. If she believes interest rates are going to fall, and you have a short conversation with the Projectionist, you will too. If she believes that, no, in fact, you didn't signal when you turned left, causing the Projectionist to ram her car into the back of yours, so will you.
Her downfall began when she fell in love with the Inverse. She absolutely, 100% fell in love with the Inverse. She projected all this emotion onto him but the Inverse, being the Inverse, simply reflected the opposite of everything she was sending.
Strangely, neither the Inverse nor the Projectionist can let go of the relationship. — Andrew Kaufman

I had often said that I would write, the wives of geniuses I have sat with. I have sat with so many. I have sat with wives who were not wives, of geniuses who were real geniuses. I have sat with real wives of geniuses who were not real geniuses. In short, I have sat very often and very long with many wives and wives of many geniuses.' Gertrude Stein wrote this in the voice of her partner, Alice B. Toklas, Stein being apparently the genius, Alice apparently the wife.
'I am nothing,' Alice said after Gertrude dies, 'but a memory of her.'
... the flashing blues and red made him look ill, then well, then ill again ... — Lauren Groff

With him being so charming, and so perfect, so heart-achingly beautiful, but tarnished in all of the right places, and in all of the ways that I understood so well, how could I not love him? — R.K. Lilley

Often we are preoccupied with the question "How can we be witnesses in the Name of Jesus? What are we supposed to say or do to make people accept the love that God offers them?" These questions are expressions more of our fear than of our love. Jesus shows us the way of being witnesses. He was so full of God's love, so connected with God's will, so burning with zeal for God's Kingdom, that he couldn't do other than witness. Wherever he went and whomever he met, a power went out from him that healed everyone who touched him (see Luke 6:19). If we want to be witnesses like Jesus, our only concern should be to be as alive with the love of God as Jesus was. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

I get so mad at myself for being so weak! How can I love a man who beats me raw? Why do I love a fool drinker? One time I asked him, "Why? Why are you hitting me?" He leaned down and looked me right in the face. "If I didn't hit you, Minny, who knows what you become." I was trapped in the corner of the bedroom like a dog. He was beating me with his belt. It was the first time I'd ever really thought about it. Who knows what I could become, if Leroy would stop goddamn hitting me. — Kathryn Stockett

I stood there. Still. Frozen. Looking at the most handsome man I'd ever seen in my life. The man I fell in love with when he was still mostly a boy. The man who raised two great kids against the odds. The man who kept the streets of my hometown safe. The only man outside my brother and father who even tried to take care of me, he did it in a way that was beautiful, precious, so I let him. The man who made me happy. The man who was happy being with me. — Kristen Ashley

She's not happy in her marriage. Not unhappy exactly, but not happy. He doesn't want kids, so that's nothing to look forward to. Her life is chock-full of quiet tedium. Suddenly, she falls in love. And sure, there's the excitement of being with her lover, but there's also the excitement of not being with him. Of waiting and going on with her ordinary life. And all that dullness now becomes part of the drama. Because that's her cover story. All the dreary anguish and monotony that fills ninety-eight percent of her life is electrified with meaning, since it now serves as the perfect camouflage to hide the two percent of passion. And, yes, she felt guilt and, yes, she felt shame. But those are powerful emotions too, and were all part of the glorious transformation of a featureless bland life into an adventure. — Phoef Sutton

Her heart
is given him, with all its love and truth. She would joyfully die with him, or better than that, die for him. She knows he has failings, but she thinks they have grown up through his being like one cast away, for the want of something to trust in, and care for, and think well of. And she says, that lady rich and beautiful that I can never come near, 'Only put me in that empty place, only try how little I mind myself, only prove what a world of things I will do and bear for you, and I hope that you might even come to be so much better than you are, through me who am so much worse, and hardly worth the thinking of beside you. — Charles Dickens

You didn't answer my question. I asked you about being in love. You said what it was like when your wife went away."
Martin sat down again. How young she is. When we were that young we invented the world, no one could tell us a thing. Julia stood with her hands clenched, as though she wanted to pound an answer out of him. "Being in love is ... anxious," he said. "Wanting to please, worrying that she will see me as I really am. But wanting to be known. That is ... you're naked, moaning in the dark, no dignity at all ... I wanted her to see me and to love me even though she knew everything I am, and I knew her. Now she's gone, and my knowledge is incomplete. So all day I imagine what she is doing, what she says and who she talks to, how she looks. I try to supply the missing hours, and it gets harder as they pile up, all the time she's been gone. I have to imagine. I don't know, really. I don't know any more. — Audrey Niffenegger

He could never reconcile the strange fact of Kimiko's attraction with what he saw in the mirror. At best, it was related to her natural stoicism, as if Jashua were a kind of bonsai tree she trimmed and watered lovingly. "I enjoy being with you" was her preferred mode of expressing her affection. At worst, she kept him around so he could make her feel better when she needed it, a winner combination of a pet and a dildo. Somewhere along the range between the best and the worst, there was the possibility of her deep love. — Aleksandar Hemon

I said Matt was too perfect. I was tired of trying to love him, tired of the burden of being loved. How could anyone live with all that devotion and understanding? The scale was tilted so far in my favor it felt like an unbearable weight, a fortune I was compelled to squander. — James Whitfield Thomson