Once Loved You Quotes & Sayings

There's nothing, of course, more damaging and hurtful to the psyche than that - searching grimly for things to despise and revile in a person you once loved. You may destroy the beloved image but at the same time you destroy part of the basis of your self-respect, plus a whole vital chunk out of your past. Because, if he is hateful now, what aberration once caused you to waste so much love on him? — Lynne Reid Banks

Is it okay to hate a dead kid? Even if you loved him once? Even if he was my best friend? Is it okay to hate him for being dead? — A.S. King

Mean words
Once upon a time,
I loved you
But I will never
I swear. — Arzum Uzun

I mean to tell you, the Law's notion of justice is more cold-blooded than any outlaw I ever knew. And I mean 'outlaw,' not criminal. 'Criminal' doesn't distinguish between guys like men and the guys who own the banks and insurance companies and stock markets, who own the factories and coal mines and oil fields, who own the goddamn Law. I once said to John that being an outlaw was about the only way left for a man to hold on to his self-respect, and he said Ain't that the sad truth. The girls laughed along with us because they knew it wasn't a joke ... John got the publicity because he loved it ... he carried on like the whole thing was an adventure movie and he was Douglas Fairbanks. He wanted to to be a 'star.' That's how he was. Not me. I never even liked having my picture taken. All I ever wanted was to show the bastards who own the law that it didn't mean they owned me. — James Carlos Blake

In a surreal gift from the universe, time both stands still and flies past you in that singular moment when you find out someone you once loved is gone. — Rachel Thompson

How can you even dream I might be teasing?
Well, you haven't once said you loved me.
That's all you need? Easy. I love you. Okay? Want it louder? I love you. Spell it out, should I? I ell-oh-vee-ee why-oh-you. Want it backward? You love I.
You are teasing me now; aren't you?
A little maybe — William Goldman

These are the things in which I was so helplessly caught up, the waves that took me, what I loved. When light filled my eyes and I was restless and could move, I knew not what all the color was about, but only that I had a passion to see. And now that I am still, I pass on to you my liveliness and my life, for you will be taken, as once I was, and although you must fight beyond your capacity to fight and feel beyond your capacity to feel, remember that it ends in perfect peace, and you will be as still and content as am I, for whom centuries are not even seconds. — Mark Helprin

Dad pressed against my mind. Please, Allison. Let me, just this once, hold my son.
I shouldn't. Nothing good ever came from letting my father have his way. But I could feel his love for this baby. And even if he couldn't love me, I knew that at this moment, before the baby could grow up and become a disappointment to him, he truly loved him.
I slowly stepped away from the front of my mind, letting him fill that space, letting him feel through my hands, see through my eyes.
"He's amazing," Dad said through me. "You're amazing." He looked up at Violet, and she smiled. — Devon Monk

It was as if she had spoken slightingly of a woman he loved. For he dreamed of peace by day and night. Once in sleep it had appeared to him as the great glowing shoulder of the moon heaving across his window like an iceberg, arctic and destructive in the moment before the world was struck: by day he tried to win a few moments of its company, crouched under the rusting handcuffs in the locked office, reading the reports from the sub-stations. Peace seemed to him the most beautiful word in the language: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave with you: O Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace. In the Mass he pressed his fingers against his eyes to keep the tears of longing in. — Graham Greene

You don't need to be seeing someone to be in love with her. You can have lost touch with her, she can have hurt you, even inexplicably. If you ever felt that you really knew her and that it was what you knew that you loved, and if you remember what it was you once knew, why is it so crazy to retain that love still? — Elliot Perlman

So what were you doing there?"

Here's the frustrating thing about Nate, one of those things that happy memories conveniently glossed over. A lot of times, you had to ask him a question more than once to get a straight answer. He loved to answer questions you'd never asked, or to answer a question with another question.

"Do I really have to answer that, Kyrie?"

See?

"Don't you trust me?"

See?! — Genevieve Pearson

Seeing someone you once loved is like falling in love for the first time all over again. — Leah Raeder

He held me against his body and his upper arm was close to my face, so I turned and bit him. He was so startled he actually released me and I tried to jab him with the knife, but he gripped my wrist.

"Did you bite me?" he asked as he stared at my teeth marks on his bicep.

"Not hard enough. There isn't even blood," I said. Luca's shoulders twitched once, then again. He was fighting laughter. Not the effect I'd intended when I bit him but I had to admit I loved the sound of his deep chuckle.

"I think you've done enough damage for one day," he said. — Cora Reilly

We will remain unwritten through history, no X will mark us on the map; but in books of prose and poetry, you loved me once, in a paragraph. — Lang Leav

Can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"You told me once that you loved me because I was human," I said, my voice tiny. "Will you still
love me when I'm an angel? Even if I won't be human anymore?"
"Always," he said, green eyes bright. "Even if you stop loving me."
I felt myself begin to crumble and I left the armory and him sitting on the — Courtney Allison Moulton

I saw a drummer play once when I was a kid and I thought, that's really cool. You know, you're moving. You're using your arms and fingers. So I tried it and I loved it. — Bill Kreutzmann

"Oh, you want too much!" she cried to Gatsby. "I love you now-isn't that enough? I can't help what's past." She began to sob helplessly. "I did love him once-but I loved you too."
Gatsby's eyes opened and closed.
"You loved me too?" he repeated.
"Even that's a lie," said Tom savagely. "She didn't know you were alive. Why-there're things between Daisy and me that you'll never know, things that neither of us can ever forget." — F Scott Fitzgerald

While I slept you stood in the
colorful night market
with pyramids of bright
fruit piled high
Where those who loved you,
rushing back to their intimate stalls,
held out pears that had been
dreamed for you
And would the dream pear not
come gladly
once it knew this was you
wanting to take it in?
The dream pear chose reality,
wanting your mouth as I did -
Honestly, it was happy to be bitten. — Brenda Hillman

LXXIX
When I die, I want your hands on my eyes.
I want the light and wheat of your beloved hands to pass their freshness over me once moreL
I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny.
I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep.
I want your ears still to hear the wind, I want you to sniff the sea's aroma that we loved together,
to continue to walk on the sand we walk on.
I want what I love to continue to live,
and you whom I love and sang above everything else.
to continue to flourish, full-flowered.
So that you can reach everything my love directs you to.
So that my shadow can travel along in your hair,
so that everything can learn the reason for my song. — Pablo Neruda

This is your world, kid. Not mine. You know I don't belong here."
"You once told me you loved it down south."
"I was talking about anal sex."
"Of course you were. — Tiffany Reisz

Jem had moved the same way coming in, but as Will neared him, Jem took a step toward his former parabatai, and the step was swift, eager, and human, as if being close to the people whom he loved made him feel made of flesh and racing blood once more.
"You're here," said Will, and implicit in the words was the sense that Will's contentment was complete. Now Jem was there, all was right with the world. — Cassandra Clare

Don't be embarrassed about being loved. I'm not asking you for anything; just let me love you and play the piano again tonight, just once more, if I still have the strength to do it. In exchange I ask only one thing: If you hear anyone say that I'm dying, go straight to my ward. Let me have my wish. — Paulo Coelho

But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play
I tell you, Dorian, that it is on things like these that our lives depend. Browning writes about that somewhere; but our own senses will imagine them for us. There are moments when the odour of lilas blanc passes suddenly across me, and I have to live the strangest month of my life over again. — Oscar Wilde

Once a week I would meet up with the coolest teacher and we'd go over my work. All my friends were like, Soooo ... once a week at lunch you meet up with Mr. Schulenberg to talk about poetry. They all thought I was having sex with my teacher. But I really just loved to write and it was a nice outlet. — Dave Franco

Graves aren't for the dead. They're for the loved ones the dead leave behind them. Once those loved ones have gone, once all the lives that have touched the occupant of any given grave had ended, then the grave's purpose was fulfilled and ended. I suppose if you looked at it that way, one might as well decorate one's grave with an enormous statue or a giant temple. It gave people something to talk about, at least. Although, following that logic, I would need to have a roller coaster, or maybe a Tilt-A-Whirl constructed over my own grave when I died. Then even after my loved ones had moved on, people could keep having fun for years and years. Of course, I'd need a slightly larger plot. — Jim Butcher

Thanksgiving dinner's sad and thankless. Christmas dinner's dark and blue. When you stop and try to see it From the turkey's point of view.
Sunday dinner isn't sunny. Easter feasts are just bad luck. When you see it from the viewpoint of a chicken or a duck. Oh how I once loved tuna salad Pork and lobsters, lamb chops too Till I stopped and looked at dinner From the dinner's point of view. — Shel Silverstein

She started to rise, for she feared Dash might become angry, lose his temper as he had before with Finn, but this Dash, this man who was struggling to find his footing, planted his feet solidly on the deck.
"She married someone else, Finn," he said quietly. "There was no battle to fight once she'd done that. I'd lost, and sometimes when you lose, there is nothing you can do but move on."
Finn sighed and shook his head, the arguments and problems of adults far beyond his ken, but he still persisted, struggling to understand. "Did you?"
"Did I what?"
"Move on? After you lost her?"
Again, Dash shook his head. "Nay, I didn't. Not at all."
"'Cause you loved her?"
Dash looked away. "Aye. Without her, I lost my course and sailed about the seas rather like the Dutchman. — Elizabeth Boyle

Once when we were fifteen, River (Phoenix) and I went out for this fancy dinner in Manhattan and I ordered soft-shell crabs. He left the restaurant and walked around on Park Avenue, crying. I went out and said, "I love you so much. Why?" He had such a pain that I was eating an animal, that he hadn't impressed on me what was right. I loved him for that. For his dramatic desire that we share every belief, that I be with him all the way — Martha Plimpton

Thank you for giving me your arm and those four hours that I now understand you did not have an endless supply of. It was short but I loved our little trip. We fell in love, but the way you love a view that comes along once or twice in life. — Mary-Louise Parker

All of life is quilted from the scraps of what once was and is no more- the places we have been, the memories we have made, the people we have known, that which has been long loved but has grown threadbare over time and can be worn no longer. We keep only pieces. All colors, all shapes, all sizes.
"All waiting to be stitched into the pattern only you can see. — Lisa Wingate

And I was happy ... and devastatingly sad too. It was hard, watching someone you had once loved, loving someone else, and loving them more than they'd loved you. But, really, that's exactly what I'd done to Denny with Kellan -Kiera — S.C. Stephens

Looking over at the lump of comforter and jackets and shadow where Gavriel was hiding, she took a deep breath. "I won't leave you," she told Aidan. "I promise."
No one else was going to get killed today, not if she could save them. Certainly not someone she'd once thought she loved, even if he was a jerk. Not some dead boy full of good advice. And she hoped not herself, either. — Holly Black

It happens to many teenagers-that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly. — John Irving

After you're gone, people will forget your name, no matter how important it was, and your face, no matter how pretty it was, and what you said, no matter how clever any of it sounded.
The things you've done will crumble and fade and the places you once loved, will change and be given new names.
You are only here for one moment and it lasts exactly one lifetime. — Pleasefindthis

I was once more struck by the truth of the ancient saying: Man's heart is a ditch full of blood. The loved ones who have died throw themselves down on the bank of this ditch to drink the blood and so come to life again; the dearer they are to you, the more of your blood they drink. — Nikos Kazantzakis

More than every once in awhile,
More than most dreams,
More than just my heart,
More than anything,
More than you know,
And more than I can say,
I've loved you more
Every passing day — Laura Miller

I gave myself to you sooner than I ever did to any man, I swear to you; and do you know why? Because when you saw me spitting blood you took my hand; because you wept; because you are the only human being who has ever pitied me. I am going to say a mad thing to you: I once had a little dog who looked at me with a sad look when I coughed; that is the only creature I ever loved. When he died I cried more than when my mother died. It is true that for twelve years of her life she used to beat me. Well, I loved you all at once, as much as my dog. If men knew what they can have for a tear, they would be better loved and we should be less ruinous to them. — Alexandre Dumas-fils

Jake stayed right next to her, his hold at once protective and possessive. There was no doubt in her mind that she loved this man. "How did you get it?" She didn't — Kaylea Cross

But I'm not hte only one to blame,' Midori continued. 'It's ture I've got a cold streak. I recognize that. But if they - my father and mother - had loved me a little more. I would have been able to feel more - to feel real sadness for example.'
'Do you think you weren't loved enough?'
She tilted her head and looked at me. Then she gave a sharp, little nod. 'Somewhere between 'not enough' and 'not at all.' 'I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it - to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once. But they never gave that to me. Never, not once. — Haruki Murakami

A Remedy for Insomnia
Not sheep coming down the hills,
not cracks on the ceiling
count the ones you loved,
the former tenants of dreams
who would keep you awake,
once meant the world to you,
rocked you in their arms,
those who loved you ...
You will fall asleep, by dawn, in tears. — Vera Pavlova

I could have loved you once And said it But then you went away And when you came back Love was a forgotten word, Remember? — Marilyn Monroe

We can ask and ask but we can't have again what once seemed ours for ever - the way things looked, that church alone in the fields, a bed on a belfry floor, a remembered voice, the touch of a hand, a loved face. They've gone and you can only wait for the pain to pass.
All this happened so long ago. And I never returned, never wrote, never met anyone who might have given me news of Oxgodby. So, in memory, it stays as I left it, a sealed room furnished by the past, airless, still, ink long dry on a put-down pen.
But this was something I knew nothing of as I closed the gate and set off across the meadow. — J.L. Carr

Ter refused to ride buses. The people depressed him, sitting there. He liked Greyhound stations though. We used to go to the ones in San Francisco and Oakland. Mostly Oakland, on San Pablo Avenue. Once he told me he loved me because I was like San Pablo Avenue. He was like the Berkeley dump. I wish there was a bus to the dump. We went there when we got homesick for New Mexico. It is stark and windy and gulls soar like nighthawks in the desert. You can see the sky all around you and above you. Garbage trucks thunder through dust-billowing roads. Gray dinosaurs. — Lucia Berlin

Death is a personal matter, arousing sorrow, despair, fervor, or dry-hearted philosophy. Funerals, on the other hand, are social functions. Imagine going to a funeral without first polishing the automobile. Imagine standing at a graveside not dressed in your best dark suit and your best black shoes, polished delightfully. Imagine sending flowers to a funeral with no attached card to prove you had done the correct thing. In no social institution is the codified ritual of behavior more rigid than in funerals. Imagine the indignation if the minister altered his sermon or experimented with facial expression. Consider the shock if, at the funeral parlors, any chairs were used but those little folding yellow torture chairs with the hard seats. No, dying, a man may be loved, hated, mourned, missed; but once dead he becomes the chief ornament of a complicated and formal social celebration. — John Steinbeck

You don't need to sleep with more men to gain more experience. You need to wake up and understand that practicing with different teams every time won't make you perfect for one team. The team you need practice with is the team you're guaranteed to be on forever. Get the ring first, then, get to practicing. — Pierre Alex Jeanty

I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can't imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else. I haven't been. — Raymond Carver

Domingo, your family needs you. Let me explain why I feel strongly that you must stay with them. I had a family once too that loved me. But I made a mistake. I was lured away by other things. When I realized they were what mattered, it was already too late. — Tess Uriza Holthe

You're right, Jottie, but what good is it? Rightness is nothing. You can't live on it. You might as well eat ashes." I glanced at Father, his bloodshot eyes and the stain on his pants. I loved him so. Once more, I tried to explain. "This is all we can do; it's all we're allowed. We can't go back. The only thing time leaves for us to decide" -- I picked up Father's hand and held it tight-- "is whether or not we're going to hate each other. — Annie Barrows

No matter what the future holds even if, God forbid, Conner dies in his prime, or leaves me, or whatever else that fates might throw at us it would be worth it because once you've loved someone the way I love Conner, once someone loved you the he loves me, once you've loved and been loved that way nothing and no one can ever take it away. Whether it last 5 minutes or 50 years that love becomes a permanent part of you. — Linda Lael Miller

In the way such things happen in real life, I suspect I'll never see him again. We talked about that once. There was a term in Japanese, he said. Eng. It was both a concept and a word of advice. It meant that anyone you meet may be the most important person in your life. Therefore, that every stranger should be treated as a friend. Loved before it is too late. You never know (he said) in which night your ship is passing. — Tobias Hill

You don't wear jewelry, do you? Besides your wedding ring, I mean?'

'Now often. If is not that I disapprove. I simply don't take the time to bother with it. I've been given a few trinkets over the years, but rarely wear them.' Thora looked down at her hand, the plain thin wedding band, the unadorned wrist, and a memory struck her. She said, 'Frank gave me a gift once - a find gold bracelet with a blue enamel heart dangling from it. He said it was to remind me that I was more than his helpmeet and housekeeper, but also an attractive woman. I was sure I'd break the delicate chain, and the heart clacked against the desk whenever I wrote in the ledger. So I put it back in its box, and there it has remained ever since.'

Nan said gently, 'We've all been given gifts, Thors, and ought not to hide them away. They remind us that we are blessed and loved. They give pleasure to those who see them - especially to the one who bestowed the gift in the first place. — Julie Klassen

You call him treacherous now, but you loved him once.' 'It is because I loved him once,' she rejoined earnestly, 'that I call him treacherous now. — Emmuska Orczy

I loved them. True, I was scared to death getting on the damn thing. But once the pilot took off and we were in the air, I was hooked. It was a tremendous adrenaline rush - you're low and fast. It's awesome. The momentum of the aircraft keeps you in place; you don't even feel any wind buffeting. And hell - if you fall, you'll never feel a thing. — Chris Kyle

Don't cheat if you are unhappy, just walk away and give the respect of the person you once loved to move on — Patrick Stevens

Real isn't how you are made. It's a thing that happens to you," said the Skin Horse. " When you are real you don't mind being hurt.
It doesn't happen all at once. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen to people who break easily, or who have sharp corners. Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out, and you get loose and very shabby. But these don't matter at all, because once you are Real, you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.
Once you are Real, you can't unreal. It last forever — Margery Williams

I've loved men that wear un-ironed clothes, it doesn't make me fall out of love. When you love someone, you should see beyond their image. It just makes me want to iron their shirt. But once you love a person, they could wear a garbage bag! — Olga Kurylenko

I've always loved strong women, which is lucky for me because once you're over about twenty-five there is no other kind. Women blow my mind. The stuff that routinely gets done to them would make most men curl up and die, but women turn to steel and keep on coming. Any man who claims he's not into strong women is fooling himself mindless; he's into strong women who know how to pout prettily and put on baby voices, and who will end up keeping his balls in her makeup bags. — Tana French

Why do you want to do this?" he asked curiously. "Why is this woman so important to you?"
Saint-Germain blinked in surprise. "Have you ever loved anyone?" he asked.
"Yes," Tamnuz said cautiously, "I had a consort once, Inanna ... "
"But did you love her? Truly love her?"
The Green Man remained silent.
"Did she mean more to you than life itself?" Saint-Germain persisted.
"They do not love that do not show their love," Shakespeare murmured very softly.
The French immortal stepped closer to the Elder. "I love my Jeanne," he said simply. "I must go to her."
"Even though it will cost you everything?" Tamnuz persisted, as if the idea was incomprehensible.
"Yes. Without Joan, everything I have is worthless."
"Even your immortality?"
"Especially my immortality." Gone were the banter and the jokes. This was a Saint-Germain whom neither Shakespeare nor Palamedes had ever seen before. "I love her," he said, — Michael Scott

Grief is beautiful?' She thought it was the most dreadful feeling possible. At best she viewed the world through a haze, and at worst everything looked black.
'It means you've loved another with all your heart,' Luka said. 'What's the use of being alive if you've never loved like that, not even once? — Belinda Alexandra

On the fifth [day] Arnom came to me, himself weeping, and I knew his tidings without words. And this is a strange folly, that what seemed to me worst of all was that Bardia had died without ever hearing what it would have shamed him to hear. It seemed to me that all would be bearable if, once only, I could have gone to him and whispered in his ear, 'Bardia, I loved you. — C.S. Lewis

Strange how someone you once loved can become just another person you once knew. — Nicki Minaj

But say what you will, 'tis better to be left than never to have been loved. To pass our youth in dull indifference, to refuse the sweets of life because they once must leave us, is as preposterous as to wish to have been born old, because we one day must be old. — William Congreve

The only part of the evening I really enjoyed was when Lord Pomtinius told me a limerick about an adulterous abbot."
"Don't you dare repeat it!" her sister ordered. Georgiana had never shown the faintest wish to rebel against the rules of propriety. She loved and lived by them.
"There once was an adulterous abbot," Olivia teased, "as randy-"
Georgiana slapped her hands over her ears. "I can't believe he told you such a thing! Father would be furious if he knew."
"Lord Pomtinius was in his cups," Olivia said. "Besides, he's ninety-six and he doesn't care about decorum any longer. Just a laugh, now and then."
"It doesn't even make sense. An adulterous abbot? How can an abbot be adulterous? They don't even marry."
"Let me know if you want to hear the whole verse," Olivia said. "It ends with talk of nuns, so I believe the word was being used loosely. — Eloisa James

Believe it or not, I loved my Jheri curl and thought it was beautiful on me. It actually made my hair grow like crazy. What they didn't tell you back then was that once you get the Jheri curl, there's no way of getting rid of it, so when I was over it, I ended up having to cut off all my hair and start all over again. — Kimberly Elise

You Only Live Once. That's what people said, as if life really mattered because it happened only one time. But what if it was the other way around? What if what you did mattered MORE because life happened again and again, consequences unfolding across centuries and contents? What if you had chances upon chances to love the people you loved, to fix what you screwed up, to get it right? — Sharon Guskin

It's a bit burned," my mother would say apologetically at every meal, presenting you with a piece of meat that looked like something - a much-loved pet perhaps - salvaged from a tragic house fire. "But I think I scraped off most of the burned part," she would add, overlooking that this included every bit of it that had once been flesh.
Happily, all this suited my father. His palate only responded to two tastes - burned and ice cream - so everything suited him so long as it was sufficiently dark and not too startlingly flavorful. Theirs truly was a marriage made in heaven, for no one could burn food like my mother or eat it like my dad. — Bill Bryson

Ana Iris once asked me if I loved him and I told her about the lights in my old home in the capital, how they flickered and you never knew if they would go out or not. You put down your things and you waited and couldn't do anything really until the lights decided. This, I told her, is how I feel. — Junot Diaz

Part of me was once someone you loved - she sent. I think that part of me wants to be loved by you again, and wants me to love you as well. I can't be her. I can just be me. But I think you could love me if you wanted to. I want you to. Come to me when you can. I'll be here. — John Scalzi

I want to crawl to her feet, whimper to be forgiven, for loving her, for needing her more than my own life, for belonging to her more than my own soul."

"If he loved you with all the power of his soul for a whole lifetime, he couldn't love you as much as I do in a single day."

"...he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."

"If you ever looked at me once with what I know is in you, I would be your slave."
"Be with me always. Take any form, drive me mad, only do not leave me in this dark alone where I cannot find you."
~ Wuthering Heights — Emily Bronte

As I listened I felt a dull numbness, like the effect of chloroform, rather than the primal, anarchic agony you usually feel when you encounter someone you have loved now turned to dust, in some object like a little bowl, and you are required to believe that it is still the same person who once smiled at you. — Magda Szabo

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

Don't you see? The things we once loved do not change, only our belief in them ... You are left with the only things that any of us have in the end. The things we keep inside of ourselves, that grow out of us, that tell us who we are. — Kevin Wilson

Do you think I am a fool, Masha? All this time, and you speak to me as though I were a flighty pinprick of a girl. I am a magician! Did you never think, even once, that I loved lipstick and rouge for more than their color alone? I am a student of their lore, and it is arcane and hermetic beyond the dreams of alchemists. Did you never wonder why I gave you so many pots, so many creams, so much perfume? — Catherynne M Valente

Yet deep inside I know that I'm truly blessed that I was loved by someone like you. I'll always love you my Mia Amor. I'll never forget the first poem I've written for you and how that was the first taste of love I've ever felt in my 26 years.
You've shown me a love that I've never known.
A love that comes along 'once' in a lifetime! A love 'through the years'; I have shared with you! You are this kind of love, I love you. Thank you for being the "PERFECT LOVE" for me. — Chimnese Davids

O Malalai of Maiwand, Rise once more to make Pashtuns understand the song of honor, Your poetic words turn worlds around, I beg you, rise again My father told the story of Malalai to anyone who came to our house. I loved hearing the story and the songs my father sang to me, and the way my name floated on the wind when people called it. — Malala Yousafzai

Thank you, Caleb said, and hugged me once more. Part of me wanted to stay in Caleb's arms, because he'd always had this grounding effect on me. Caleb was my rational side. He was more than that; other than my mother, he was the first person I'd ever truly loved.
Caleb would always be my best friend. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

I once heard you can't truly hate a person until you've cared about them. Until you've loved them -Mandarin — Kirsten Hubbard

The right loved one will fill up your life like the final puzzle piece that makes it all complete. You feel it when you meet them. Or sometimes if you aren't mature enough or wise enough, it can take time to discover that they are the right one. Once your jigsaw puzzle is complete, the rest are often just extra pieces. — Kate McGahan

You don't get to keep the feelings for someone you once loved. Once you've washed your hands of that person, all those feelings, all that dirty water is washed out to sea. — Samantha Hunt

Once upon a time, I believe it was a Tuesday when I caught your eye, we got onto something, I hold on to the night. You looked me in the eye and told me you loved me. Were you just kidding, cuz it seems to me, this thing is breaking down we almost never speak. I don't feel welcome anymore. Baby what happened please tell me cuz one second is perfect now you're halfway out the door.
And I stood at the phone, you still haven't called. And you feel so below you, can't feel nothing at all. And I flashback to when he said forever & always. — Taylor Swift

For you see, Captain Flint, I, too, never settle for less than what I want. Or never thought I possibly could. I'm a Redmond. If only you truly understood what this means. So I set out to reorder the world in a way I thought would make me worthy of her love. But my quest has changed me in ways I never anticipated, and I'm not the man who once loved that girl. There's much more to my journey yet. And here's a bitter irony: I've found in becoming heroic, in becoming worthy of her, I've painted myself into an untenable corner. I've more work to do to prove someone's innocence or guilt. — Julie Anne Long

I will be forever grateful for your presence in my life. I am a much better human being because of you. The experience of loving you, living with you, was the greatest journey of my life thus far. You showed me an alternative to the man I was becoming.
I know I still have much to learn, much to accomplish, and I know my future is bright. I owe you the confidence I now have in myself. This is the confidence that could only come from the knowledge that a woman of your caliber loved me for who I am; for what you saw in me.
You are a great woman and I mean that in the strongest sense of the phrase. You feel deeply, think deeply, and live deeply. I admire so much about you. Regardless of whether our paths cross again, know that I am actively wishing you success and happiness. I pray that you will once again be part of my life. But if left with just the experience we've shared, I know my life was better because of it. — Emma Forrest

And how could she ever open her mouth to tell him, in the guise of reminiscing, I haven't been on a ferry in twelve years. Once upon a time I was a girl and my name was Dottie and I was seventeen and in love and I was real. I had a life that I loved and it was beautiful and the boy was beautiful and here I am again but once was enough, once is all you get to ask for, once is about all I can survive. — Bob Shacochis

All the delights of sense, or heart, or intellect, with which you could once have tempted him, even the delights of virtue itself, now seem to him in comparison but as the half nauseous attractions of a raddled harlot would seem to a man who hears that his true beloved whom he has loved all his life and whom he had believed to be dead is alive and even now at his door. — C.S. Lewis

He had the desperation, not the courage, to be himself. Once you do that, you can't go wrong, because you can't make any mistakes when people love you for being yourself. But for Kurt, it didn't matter that other people loved him; he simply didn't love himself enough. — Charles R. Cross

Twenty-three," he said. "Mm?" She opened her dazed eyes. Thorne pulled back, looking guilty and worried, which made some of her euphoria fade away. "You once asked me how many times I'd told a girl I loved her. I've been trying to remember them all, and I'm pretty sure the answer is twenty-three." She blinked, a slow, fluttering stare. Her lips pursed in a question that took a while to form. "Including the Lunar girl who kissed you?" His brow furrowed. "Are we counting her?" "You said it, didn't you?" His gaze darted to the side. "Twenty-four." Cress gaped. Twenty-four girls. She didn't even know twenty-four people. — Marissa Meyer

I was not supposed to love you. The woman had said that - and then she died. She should not have loved him, and he should not have dared to love her. He deserved this darkness, and once the invisible boundary shattered and the waiting thing pounced, infiltrating and filling him ... he'd have earned it. — Sarah J. Maas

If you love somebody deeply and you lose that relationship - whether through death, rejection or separation - you will feel pain. That pain is called grief. Grief is a normal emotional reaction to any significant loss, whether a loved one, a job or a limb. There's no way to avoid or get rid of it - it's just there. And, once accepted, it will pass in its own time.
Unfortunately, many of us refuse to accept grief. We will do anything rather than feel it. We may bury ourselves in work, drink heavily, throw ourselves into a new relationship 'on the rebound' or numb ourselves with prescribed medications. But no matter how hard we try to push grief away, deep down inside it's still there. And eventually it will be back.
It's like holding a football underwater. As long as you keep holding it down, it stays beneath the surface. But eventually your arm gets tired and the moment you release your grip, the ball leaps straight up out of the water. — Russ Harris

Once you've been loved by a man like Damian, once you've been branded and molded in the fires of that possession, you will never be moved by tepid, impostor kisses. — Leylah Attar

Tall, narrow, and grand, the first house was a Victorian. Once loved by a family, it ended up a college rental. Dylan took it from rundown and abused to grand again.
"Could you see yourself living here?" he asked, wrapping his arms around me from behind.
"No," I said softly.
"Good. Me either, but I'd have moved in tomorrow if you said yes."
Squirming around to face him, I sighed. "You're so whipped."
"I know, but only when it comes to you."
"It's only fair since you own my heart and could destroy me if you wanted."
"Could, but never will," he said, taking my hand. "Let's go look at the midcentury house."
"What if I don't like that one either?"
Dylan opened the car door and shrugged. "Plenty of houses in Ellsberg that need love. We'll find one and make it ours. — Bijou Hunter

Loved me. How over the top and dramatic can one person get? I mean, hell. Lust at seventeen, sure. Sex buddies at eighteen, shit yeah. But love? Love doesn't enter anyone's life until you turn forty-two, add fifty pounds to your body, and start complaining about the younger generations. Once someone can put up with your forty-two-year-old annoying ass and nasty farts, you know that's real love. — Brittainy C. Cherry

Love is a force that can't be forced.
Let it find you. It knows your address and who it is supposed to deliver within your path will be shipped to you unexpectedly.
Be sure that your life isn't cluttered and that your heart is ready enough to welcome it.
You will find "Nemo," before you ever find love, let it find you. — Pierre Alex Jeanty

As once I loved you in my mortal flesh, without it now I love you still. — Dante Alighieri

You told me once dear, you really loved me
And no one else could come between.
But now you've left me and love another;
You have shattered all my dreams. — Kate Avelynn

But once upon a time - that would be our time - a telephone cord seemed like nothing less than a lifeline.
It was your attachment to the outside world and, even more than that, your attachment to the people you loved, or wanted to love, or tried to love.
Everything about it was fitting - the way it curled in on itself, the way it got so easily tangled, the way you could pull it only so far before it kept you in place.
Twisted and knotted and essential. — David Levithan

He can't really love anyone, you know, and in the end such people are always alone, no matter how much other people once loved them. — Elizabeth Kostova

One of the things I've realised is that I am very simple. My wife asked me once if I loved her. I said: 'Look love, I'm a simple man. I love you. End of story.' But I guess you gotta keep saying it with women. I guess she needed reassurance. — Bob Hoskins

So, be slow if you must, but let
the heart still play its true part.
Love still as once you loved, deeply
and without patience. Let God and the world
know you are grateful.That the gift has been given. — Mary Oliver

We were once getting married. And I have loved you all this time- a century and a half. -Jem — Cassandra Clare

Betsy Trotwood don't look a likely subject for the tender passion, but the time was, Trot, when she believed in that man most entirely. When she loved him, Trot, right well. When there was no proof of attachment and affection that she would not have given him. He was a fine-looking man when I married him", said my aunt, with an echo of her old pride and admiration in her tone. "I was a fool; and I am so far an incurable fool on that subject, that, for the sake of what I once believed him to be, I wouldn't have even this shadow of my idle fancy hardly dealt with. For I was in earnest, Trot, if ever a woman was. There, my dear. Now, you know the beginning, middle, and end, and all about it. We won't mention the subject to one another any more; neither, of course, will you mention it to anybody else. This is my grumpy, frumpy story, and we'll keep it to ourselves, Trot! — Charles Dickens