I Loved You Then And I Love You Now Quotes & Sayings

When it was done and I went to sleep, I lay awake and listened to the clock on your nightstand and the wind outside and understood that I was really home, that in bed with you was home, and something that had been getting close in the dark was suddenly gone. It could not stay. It had been banished. It knew how to come back, I was sure of that, but it could not stay and I could really go to sleep. My heart cracked with gratitude. I think it was the first gratitude I've ever really known. I lay there beside you and the tears rolled down the sides of my face and onto the pillow. I loved you then and I love you now and I have loved you every second in between. I don't care if you understand me. Understanding is vastly overrated, but nobody ever gets enough safety. I've never forgotten how safe I felt with that thing gone out of the darkness. — Stephen King

Indirectly, though, he was present in many of our conversations. Once, for instance, my father asked me a series of questions that suddenly made me wonder whether I understood even my father whom I felt closer to than any man I have ever known. "You like to tell true stories, don't you?" he asked, and I answered, "Yes, I like to tell stories that are true." Then he asked, "After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don't you make up a story and the people to go with it? "Only then will you understand what happened and why. "It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us." Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them. — Norman Maclean

I'm Free "

Don't grieve for me, for now I'm free.
I'm following the path God laid for me.
I took God's hand when I heard the call;

I turned my back and left it all.
I could not stay another day

To laugh, to love, to work or play.

Tasks left undone must stay that way,
I found that place at the close of day.
If my parting has left a void,

Then fill it with remembered joy.

A friendship shared, a laugh, a kiss.
Ah, yes, these things, I too, will miss.
Be not burdened with times of sorrow,

I wish you the sunshine of tomorrow.
My life's been full, I savored much,

Good friends, good times, a loved one's touch.
Perhaps my time seemed all too brief;

don't lengthen it now with undue grief.
Lift up your heart and share with me,
God wanted me now, God set me free. — Harold S. Kushner

Obelisk?" "It's my favorite word." "Really?" "One of them, at least. Look at it." I look. "That is one straight-up, upstanding, powerful word. Unique, original, and kind of stealthy because it doesn't really sound like what it is. It's a word that surprises you and makes you think, Oh. All right then. It commands respect, but it's also modest. Not like 'monument' or 'tower.' " He shakes his head. "Pretentious bastards." I don't say anything because I used to love words. I loved them and was good at arranging them. Because of this, I felt protective of all the best ones. But now all of them, good and bad, frustrate me. — Jennifer Niven

Then I'm a paunchy guy in a room, with a note pinned to his sleeve:
"You were alone in the world," it says, "and did a kindness for someone in need. Good for you. Now post this module, and follow this map to the home of Mrs. Ken Schwartz. Care for her with some big money that will come in the mail. Find someone to love. Your heart has never been broken. You've never done anything unforgivable or hurt anyone beyond reparation. Everyone you've ever loved you've treated like gold. — George Saunders

I love you," he declared. "Loved you then. Love you now. Never quit lovin' you in a way I know I never will. You were it for me, the only one, the only woman I ever loved, and you never quit bein' it. — Kristen Ashley

Okay. This was good. This was heading somewhere I'd - "I want to strangle you," she said, her voice hoarse. All right, that wasn't good. Not at all. "You have no idea how badly I want to kick you right now," she added. And that was worse. This wasn't - "I love you," she said, and she swallowed. "I've loved you since you pushed me down on the playground. I swear - I've loved you since then. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Have we not, indeed, loved mankind, in so humbly recognizing their impotence, in so lovingly alleviating their burden and allowing their feeble nature even to sin, with our permission? Why have you come to interfere with us now? And why are you looking at me so silently and understandingly with your meek eyes? Be angry! I do not want your love, for I do not love you. And what can I hide from you? Do I not know with whom I am speaking? What I have to tell you is all known to you already, I can read it in your eyes. And is it for me to hide our secret from you? Perhaps you precisely want to hear it from my lips. Listen, then: we are not with you, but with him, that is our secret! For a long time now - eight centuries already - we have not been with you, but with him — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Being loved means; are disagreements welcome in my relationships? If you cant disagree with someone then you live in a tyranny and if you live in a tyranny then you are only loved to the degree that you erase yourself and conform to the irrational expectations of bullies. That isn't love obviously.
Now if somebody in you life demands that you not disagree with them and gets angry, "offended", or outraged should you disagree with them then, that person is not a good person. It's pretty narcissistic. It's somebody who does not have the maturity, wisdom, and ego strength to handle, and in fact welcome disagreements.
When people disagree with me as a whole I think it's a great opportunity for learning. People don't want to expose topics that might cause disagreement because, if the disagreement is punished then the illusion of being loved by good people is shattered. — Stefan Molyneux

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

We women, me and you. Tell me something real. Don't just say I'm grown and ought to know. I don't. I'm fifty and I don't know nothing. What about it? Do I stay with him? I want to, I think. I want ... well, I didn't always ... now I want. I want some fat in this life."
"Wake up. Fat or lean, you got just one. This is it."
"You don't know either, do you?"
"I know enough to know how to behave."
"Is that it? Is that all it is?"
"Is that all what is?"
"Oh shoot! Where the grown people? Is it us?"
"Oh, Mama." Alice Manfred blurted it out and then covered her mouth.
Violet had the same thought: Mama. Mama? Is this where you got to and couldn't do it no more? The place of shade without trees where you know you are not and never again will be loved by anybody who can choose to do it? Where everything is over but the talking?
- Violet Trace and Alice Manfred — Toni Morrison

Then and now, beautiful, I'll take you any way you come to me ... Any way. I love this Sylvie, I loved that Sylvie. I just love you, baby. — Kristen Ashley

I love you, I know this must come as something of a surprise, since all I've ever done is scorn you and degrade you and taunt you, but I have loved you for several hours now, and every second, more. I thought an hour ago that I loved you more than any woman has ever loved a man, but a half hour after that I knew that what I felt before was nothing compared to what I felt then. But ten minutes after that, I understood that my previous love was a puddle compared to the high seas before a storm. — William Goldman

Take any emotion - love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions - if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them - you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. "But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, 'All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment'. — Mitch Albom

I loved you then and I love you now and I have loved you every second in between. — Stephen King

It was years ago now, on a warm summer night,
When the boy came out of the sea.
His skin was blue and his hair was white,
And he was in love with me.
He was wild and true, and right then I knew
That he was in love with me.

In our ship we sailed for years on the ocean,
Unfettered and totally free.
And he gave all his days to his endless devotion,
For he was in love with me.
I called it a phase and made endless delays,
Though he was in love with me.

One day the waves swept him right off the ship
And dropped him into the blue.
As his skin turned to water, his hair into fish,
He asked if I loved him too.
Too late I called through the wind and the water,
'I was always in love with you.'
I was always in love with you. — Traci Chee

Is it true that you don't love me anymore?"
"Yes."
"Why? Because I lied to you? Because I left you? Because I humiliated you?"
"No. Just when I felt deceived, abandoned, humiliated, I loved you very much, I wanted you more than in any other moment of our life together."
"And then?"
"I don't love you anymore because, to justify yourself, you said that you had fallen into a void, an absence of sense, and it wasn't true."
"It was."
"No. Now I know what an absence of sense is and what happens if you manage to get back to the surface from it. You, you don't know. At most you glanced down, you got frightened, and you plugged up the hole with Carla's body. — Elena Ferrante

Just know that I always have, and always will really love you, Lisa. Baby or no baby. Past or no past. I loved you then and I love you now. — A. Violet End

She puts her hands on either side of my face, and the room falls away. I have never gotten so lost in a kiss before.
And then, the space between us explodes. My heart keeps missing beats and my hands cannot bring her close enough to me. I taste her and realize I have been starving.
I have loved before, but it didn't feel like this.
I have kissed before, but it didn't burn me alive.
Maybe it lasts a minute, and maybe it's an hour. All I know is that kiss, and how soft her skin is when it brushes against mine, and that even if I did not know it until now, I have been waiting for this person forever. — Jodi Picoult

There's one thing you need to understand," Larry said. "We love because God first loved us, even in the face of all our unloveliness." He paused. He seemed to want to give John time to think about that. Then he said, "Go home and love your wife John."
I'm afraid I can't find the strength in myself to do that, Larry."
Pastor Larry leaned forward, smiling tenderly. "That's good, my friend," he said. "Now we're getting somewhere. — Ann Tatlock

As I went about my work then as a young woman, and still now when I am old, Grandmam has been often close to me in my thoughts. And again I come to the difficulty of finding words. It is hard to say what it means to be at work and thinking of a person you loved and love still who did that same work before you and who taught you to do it. It is a comfort ever and always, like hearing the rhyme come when you are singing a song. — Wendell Berry

I lifted my eyes and got that wave of emotion again as his blues found me. I loved him so much I knew the fear. I'd heard others speak about it. I'd read about it in books. Now I understood. The fear that you have when you finally give your heart away to another person. It makes you very vulnerable to loss. If you never love anyone, then you'll never be hurt when they don't love you back or when they leave you. I finally had the practical experience of understanding. It sucked. — Raine Miller

I loved you then. I love you now. And I always will. — Whitney Gracia Williams

There's no point in going on if you feel that way. No point at all. You must be filled with expectancy. You must be awash in hope. You must wonder who will love you, whom you will love next." "I am done with being loved," Edward told her. "I'm done with loving. It's too painful." "Pish," said the old doll. "Where is your courage?" "Somewhere else, I guess," said Edward. "You disappoint me," she said. "You disappoint me greatly. If you have no intention of loving or being loved, then the whole journey is pointless. You might as well leap from this shelf right now and let yourself shatter into a million pieces. Get it over with. Get it all over with now. — Kate DiCamillo

I remember once, when I lived in the Capital for a month and bought the paper fresh each day, I went wild with love, anger, irritation, frustration; all of the passions boiled in me. I was young. I exploded at everything I saw. But then I saw what I was doing: I was believing what I read. Have you noticed? You believe a paper printed on the very day you buy it? This has happened but only an hour ago, you think! It must be true.' He shook his head. 'So I learned to stand back away and let the paper age and mellow. Back here, in Colonia, I saw the headlines diminish to nothing. The week-old paper - why, you can spit on it if you wish. It is like a woman you once loved, but you now see, a few days later, she is not quite what you thought. She has rather a plain face. She is no deeper than a cup of water. — Ray Bradbury

Tenleigh, when I say it was my choice to do what I did, to sacrifice getting out of here so you could, I meant that I did it happily. I mean that. I suffered, yes, but I realized I would happily suffer for you, because that's what loving someone is. Willing to do anything for them, willing to make any sacrifice, suffer so they don't have to. I loved you then, and I still love you now. — Mia Sheridan

Leaning in he kissed her gently, first on the cheek then on her lips. When he met her eyes, she saw the young man shed loved last summer and the young man she still loved now.
"I never stopped loving you, Ronnie. and I never stopped thinking about you. even if summers do come and end" she smiled knowing he was telling the truth.
"I love you too, Will Blakelee" she wispered, leaning in to kiss him again. — Nicholas Sparks

Dear Sixpence,
I saved them all, you know. Every letter you ever sent, even those to which I never replied. I'm sorry for so many things, my love: that I left
you; that I never came home; that it took me so long to realize that you were my home and that, with you by my side, none of the rest
mattered.
But in the darkest hours, on the coldest nights, when I felt I'd lost everything, I still had your letters. And through them, in some small way,
I still had you.
I loved you then, my darling Penelope, more than I could imagine - just as I love you now, more than you can know.
Michael
Hell House, February 1831 — Sarah MacLean

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

I know you don't believe me, but I really have loved you since we were kids," he said quietly.
"And now I get to love you 'til we're old."
My stomach fluttered. No one else had ever loved me as much as he did. "Promise?"
Trenton smiled with tired eyes. "Yes. And then I'll promise you again after I dance around in a
thong to Britney Spears. — Jamie McGuire

Enid had sent Rose a card with the words "I'm sorry" on it. She hadn't known what else to say because at that point she wasn't sure James knew anything about Toby Halliday. But now she wishes that she had said something else. Now that she's in love again herself - a complete surprise really, after all this time, and with someone she never expected to be in love with - Enid would tell Rose that she understands love is never the same. You can love different people over the course of a lifetime, but you won't love any two of them the same way, and quite frankly, you will love some of them more than others. A great deal more. If Toby was that to Rose - if he was the one she loved the most - then Enid would have said to her, "You will continue. But you will not recover. Don't expect that. — Helen Humphreys

I love you, Julie. I loved you that first moment when I looked across the restauraunt and found you. Then you were the loveliest thing I'd ever seen; but now I've discovered how much more you are; loyal and courageous and as true as steel. There's laughter in you and a capacity to love. Julie, Julie, could you learn to love me? — Emilie Baker Loring

didn't get it back then. I thought . . . I thought choosing him meant you didn't love me. I thought because we didn't work out, it meant we were a failure or a mistake. But I understand it now. Because I love her. I love her so much I can't see straight. But it doesn't change how I felt about you or how thankful I am to have loved you once. It's just . . ." "I'm the past. And she's the present." "Yeah," he says, relieved that I've put it into words for him, that he doesn't have to try to find them himself. "That's exactly it." I — Taylor Jenkins Reid

But...what makes you Nathan--what makes you so special--is that you are both White Witch and Black Witch, both dark and full of light. That's what I love about you. What I've always loved. And I love you still, Nathan, and I know I always will. But you're changing. And now...now what I fear is that you'll get the amulet and you'll hone the Gifts you took from your father. You'll be invulnerable and you'll kill more people, many, many more people. I fear you won't be able to stop and you'll lose yourself completely. And then I'll come to dread you too. — Sally Green

Kalmar nodded. "I'm sorry, Papa. I wasn't strong enough."
"None of us are, lad. Me least of all." Esben smiled and took a rattling breath. "But it's weakness that the Maker turns to strength. Your fur is why you alone loved a dying cloven. You alone in all the world knew my need and ministered to my wounds." Esben pulled Kalmar closer and kissed him on the head. "And in my weakness, I alone know your need. Hear me, son. I loved you when you were born. I loved you when I wept in the Deeps of Throg. I loved you even as you sang the song that broke you. And I love you now in the glory of your humility. You're more fit to be the king than I ever was. Do you understand?"
Kalmar shook his head.
Esben smiled and shuddered with pain. "A good answer, my boy. Then do you believe that I love you?"
"Yes, sir. I believe you." Kalmar buried his face in his father's fur.
"Remember that in the days to come. Nia, Janner, Leeli - help him to remember. — Andrew Peterson

Nadya Zelenin and her mother had returned from a performance of Eugene Onegin at the theatre. Going into her room, the girl swiftly threw off her dress and let her hair down. Then she quickly sat at the table in her petticoat and white bodice to write a letter like Tatyana's.
'I love you,' she wrote, 'but you don't love me, you don't love me!'
Having written this, she laughed.
She was only sixteen and had never loved anyone yet. She knew that Gorny (an army officer) and Gruzdyov (a student) were both in love with her, but now, after the opera, she wanted to doubt their love. To be unloved and miserable: what an attractive idea! There was something beautiful, touching and romantic about A loving B when B wasn't interested in A. Onegin was attractive in not loving at all, while Tatyana was enchanting because she loved greatly. Had they loved equally and been happy they might have seemed boring.
("After The Theatre") — Anton Chekhov

Claire: Dear Claire, "What" and "If" are two words as non-threatening as words can be. But put them together side-by-side and they have the power to haunt you for the rest of your life: What if? What if? What if? I don't know how your story ended but if what you felt then was true love, then it's never too late. If it was true then, why wouldn't it be true now? You need only the courage to follow your heart. I don't know what a love like Juliet's feels like - love to leave loved ones for, love to cross oceans for but I'd like to believe if I ever were to feel it, that I will have the courage to seize it. And, Claire, if you didn't, I hope one day that you will. All my love, Juliet — Lise Friedman

My life-my whole life- take it, and do with it what you will. I love you-love you as I have never loved any living thing. From the moment I met you I loved you, loved you blindly, adoringly,madly!
You didn't know it then-you know it now. — Oscar Wilde

You sense my loneliness, ( ... ) my bitterness at being shut out of life. My bitterness that I'm evil, that I don't deserve to be loved and yet I need love hungrily. My horror that I can never reveal myself to mortals. But these things don't stop me, Mother. I'm too strong for them to stop me. As you said yourself once, I am very good at being what I am. These things merely now and then make me suffer, that's all — Anne Rice

I couldn't hear a thing in the world but you. And it was so cold then, and so silent, and I loved you so much. Now it's hot and dead quiet again, and I love you still. — John Green

And sometimes when I tilt my head,
in that deep sleep, I realize I forgot to tell you
what happened at work, in the thick of,
all other rubbish daily stuff.
And then I hate to believe, it's more than
5 hours to hit the snooze, and now suddenly
the night seems longer- than any lazy afternoon.
I want to talk to you now, before I forget
How I have imagined you will react, word by word,
And act by act.
But I kind of manage dozing off in a few minutes,
And I clearly forget it morning,
This entire instance.

But tonight- when you are asleep, and I am
Wide awake like a snake, I don't say I forgot any
Buzz to discuss, but I have this insane gush
Of words of tell you I how much I have loved you through.
Precisely none of this should be forgotten,
So I decide to write this poem and tell you,
I am so much in my moment of truth. — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

I loved you then. I love you now. I'll love you tomorrow. And if you walk away from me, not one damn woman in the world will ever take your place. No one ever has. I had to learn, Dallas. It took some time. Please, just let go, forgive me, and let me love you. — Kate Stewart

Because She Would Ask Me Why I Loved Her

If questioning would make us wise
No eyes would ever gaze in eyes;
If all our tale were told in speech
No mouths would wander each to each.

Were spirits free from mortal mesh
And love not bound in hearts of flesh
No aching breasts would yearn to meet
And find their ecstasy complete.

For who is there that lives and knows
The secret powers by which he grows?
Were knowledge all, what were our need
To thrill and faint and sweetly bleed?

Then seek not, sweet, the "If" and "Why"
I love you now until I die.
For I must love because I live
And life in me is what you give. — Christopher John Brennan

Up and down," Meera would sigh sometimes as they walked, "then down and up. Then up and down again. I hate these stupid mountains of yours, Prince Bran."
"Yesterday you said you loved them."
"Oh, I do. My lord father told me about mountains, but I never saw one till now. I love them more than I can say."
Bran made a face at her. "But you just said you hated them."
"Why can't it be both?" Meera reached up to pinch his nose.
"Because they're different," he insisted. "Like night and day, or ice and fire."
"If ice can burn," said Jojen in his solemn voice, "then love and hate can mate. Mountain or marsh, it makes no matter. The land is one."
"One," his sister agreed, "but over wrinkled. — George R R Martin

Rylie," he said gently. "I love you. I've loved you since I understood what the word meant. I love who you are now, who you were then. And I'm gonna love you no matter what happens tomorrow, or next week, or next year. — J.B. Hartnett

I fell in love with you in a hurry, like you were going somewhere fast - which you did. You came and went like an earthquake, like some sort of eclipse. I've spent hours, days, months, years missing you. But then something strange happened, and now I can't remember why I ever loved you at all. You didn't deserve it. I should have loved me more. — Christina Hart

Is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all...
But is it? Is it really better to know a thing you love only to lose it?
If I'd known then what I know now...
But that's the thing, isn't it? When you're living a thing...you don't know. You take it for granted, like a dog being petted, assuming it will somehow go on forever.
If I'd known what I know now...
I'd have touched everything in sight, everything I could get my hands on. I'd have grabbed the nearest girl I could find and not even caring how crazy she thought me, touched my hands to her face just to know what that feels like.
Is it better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all?
I, never having loved before, have no real answer to that question. — Lauren Baratz-Logsted