Secretly In Love Quotes & Sayings

Perhaps you know someone whose heart clutches onto the bittersweet memory of the one who got away. Someone who secretly bears the weight of this imperceptible burden wherever he or she goes, every day of his or her life. Someone who'd gladly travel back in a time machine to a day when paths diverged, to mend together that which has been torn apart, setting destiny back on its rightful track - if only he or she could. Perhaps you know this someone better than you think. And should this someone happen to be you, may you find strength and support in the millions of others who shoulder this burden with you, and may you be reintroduced one day to true love ... in this lifetime and whatever comes after. — Sebastian Cole

You choose the end of the summer to fall in love with this guy
because secretly, you don't want it to last. — Candace Bushnell

A black boy brought Wilson's gin and he sipped it very slowly because he had nothing else to do except to return to his hot and squalid room and read a novel - or a poem. Wilson liked poetry, but he absorbed it secretly, like a drug. The Golden Treasury accompanied him wherever he went, but it was taken at night in small doses - a finger of Longfellow, Macaulay, Mangan: 'Go on to tell how, with genius wasted, Betrayed in friendship, befooled in love ... ' His taste was romantic. For public exhibition he has his Wallace. He wanted passionately to be indistinguishable on the surface from other men: he wore his moustache like a club tie - it was his highest common factor, but his eyes betrayed him - brown dog's eyes, a setter's eyes, pointing mournfully towards Bond Street. — Graham Greene

I don't know if I ended up siding with the academics just because I happened to end up in graduate school, or if I ended up in graduate school because I already secretly sided with the academics. In any case, I stopped believing that "theory" had the power to ruin literature for anyone, or that it was possible to compromise something you loved by studying it. Was love really such a tenuous thing? Wasn't the point of love that it made you want to learn more, to immerse yourself, to become possessed? — Elif Batuman

God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives.2 — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Do you have the power to move mountains? Do you turn the other cheek, able to offer love and peace to those who strike you? Are you anxious in your relationship or lack thereof? Are you concerned about your means of income, or your career, or your status? Do you fear for your children? Are you worried about what you will wear, or how others will view you in any respect? Do you secretly suspect that you can never quite measure up to what you think God or the world expects of you? That you are doomed to be a failure, always? Are you quick to point out the failures of others? — Ted Dekker

I am asking you to marry me because I love you," he said, "because I cannot imagine living my life without you. I want to see your face in the morning, and then at night, and a hundred times in between. I want to grow old with you, I want to laugh with you, and I want to sigh to my friends about how managing you are, all the while secretly knowing I am the luckiest man in town."
"What?" she demanded.
He shrugged. "A man's got to keep up appearances. I'll be universally detested if everyone realizes how perfect you are. — Julia Quinn

I don't love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,
and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don't know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams. — Pablo Neruda

If my daughter has a bad dream and wants to get into my bed, I'm a sucker for her sweet face and warm body next to mine, so I let her jump in. I should tell her to go to bed, but secretly I love it. — Lara Spencer

So much of life, it seems to me, is the framing and naming of things. I had been so busy creating a future of love that I never identified the life I was living as the life of love, because up until then I had never felt entitled enough or free enough or, honestly, brave enough to embrace my own narrative. Ironically, I had gone ahead and created the life I secretly must have wanted, but it had to be covert and off the record. Chemo was burning away the wrapper and suddenly I was in my version of life. Thus began the ecstasy - the joy, the pure joy of a spiritual pirate who finds the secret treasure. — Eve Ensler

The sway in Mala's waist, the curve of her hip beneath the folds of her sari, have caught the eye of many young men, each of whom is secretly willing to denounce the colonial prejudice of skin color by falling in love with her. — Nayomi Munaweera

Filch and Madam Pince were secretly in love with each other. — J.K. Rowling

We conceal it from ourselves in vain - we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it. — Blaise Pascal

Animal welfare - yes. Animal rights - don't make me laugh. I'm not an animals rights activist. I certainly do not love animals. In fact, I secretly mistrust all four-legged / furry / two-winged / feathered / shelled ar scaly brothers and sisters. If I were them, I would by now be plotting ultimate revenge on a scale previously unknown to man. ... I stick to a vegan diet only for reasons of self-preservertion. Call it insurance. When the time of the great animal uprising comes, I may have a small chance of escaping ... — Sharon Dodua Otoo

He turns to me and he whispers really loudly because secretly he wants other people to hear, 'I'm in love.' I roll my eyes, because he falls in love every hour on the hour with some poor new boy. — John Green

I don't love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that doesn't bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don't know any other way of loving
but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close. — Pablo Neruda

I just want to build the set for the show and be secretly in love with Ryan and not have to fight demons. — Michelle Knudsen

On the seventh day of the Seventh-month, in the Palace of Long Life,
We told each other secretly in the quiet midnight world
That we wished to fly in heaven, two birds with the wings of one,
And to grow together on the earth, two branches of one tree."
Earth endures, heaven endures; some time both shall end,
While this unending sorrow goes on and on for ever. — Bai Juyi

I can understand where he's coming from ... I too was once secretly in love with you, and I could do nothing but watch from afar. Being close to you while pretending that we're nothing more than friends. The first time I touched you with sexual intention, it was like an electrical current flowing through my fingertips and it paralyzed me. I wanted to make your senses go numb with pleasure. Not only physical pleasure, but desire too, deep inside. — Yonezou Nekota

I focus on my favorite daydream, the one where I return from London at the end of the summer and am all glamorous and drop-dead gorgeous and every girl in my school is completely jealous when Quinn McKeyan asks me to Fall Homecoming because he can't resist my charm.
Hey, it's my daydream. I can dream what I want to.
The thing is, Quinn's face keeps getting replaced in my head by Dante's.
Since I've had a mad crush on Quinn from the time we started kindergarten all the way through our junior year last year, that's saying something.
Every daydream I've had for eleven years has been of him. I'm a very loyal daydreamer. And I suddenly feel like I'm cheating on my imaginary boyfriend, a boy who happens to be real, but who has been dating my best friend Becca for the past two years. And no. Becca has no idea that I'm secretly in love with her boyfriend. It's the one secret that I've kept from her. — Courtney Cole

What if we take away the cool music and the cushioned chairs? What if the screens are gone and the stage is no longer decorated? What if the air conditioning is off and the comforts are removed? Would his Word still be enough for his people to come together? At Brook Hills we decided to try to answer this question. We actually stripped away the entertainment value and invited people to come together simply to study God's Word for hours at a time. We called it Secret Church. We set a date - one Friday night - when we would gather from six o'clock in the evening until midnight, and for six hours we would do nothing but study the Word and pray. We would interrupt the six-hour Bible study periodically to pray for our brothers and sisters around the world who are forced to gather secretly. We would also pray for ourselves, that we would learn to love the Word as they do. — David Platt

Ultimately, our obsession with celebrities isn't about them; it's about us and our needs. Many of us look at these people - who have glamour, beauty, wealth, and youth - and familiarize ourselves with them until they begin to feel like real people in our lives. We discuss them at work, in the park, and over dinner. We develop feelings for them. We love them, or hate them, or pity them, or profess not to care but secretly do. — Jake Halpern

If people only knew how much I secretly hated them, they'd love me for holding it in. — Matt Groening

To love is not to possess,
To own or imprison,
Nor to lose one's self in another.
Love is to join and separate,
To walk alone and together,
To find a laughing freedom
That lonely isolation does not permit.
It is finally to be able
To be who we really are
No longer clinging in childish dependency
Nor docilely living separate lives in silence,
It is to be perfectly one's self
And perfectly joined in permanent commitment
To another--and to one's inner self.
Love only endures when it moves like waves,
Receding and returning gently or passionately,
Or moving lovingly like the tide
In the moon's own predictable harmony,
Because finally, despite a child's scars
Or an adult's deepest wounds,
They are openly free to be
Who they really are--and always secretly were,
In the very core of their being
Where true and lasting love can alone abide. — James Kavanaugh

There is a quiet light that shines in every heart. It draws no attention to itself though it is always secretly there. It is what illuminates our minds to see beauty, our desire to seek possibility and our hearts to love life. Without this subtle quickening our days would be empty and wearisome, and no horizon would ever awaken our longing. Our passion for life is quietly sustained from somewhere in us that is wedded to the energy and excitement of life. This shy inner light is what enables us to recognize and receive our very presence here as blessing. — John O'Donohue

But on the minus side, Zeus had also had his share of fiascos. He swallowed Metis, the Goddess of Wisdom & Prudence, & thus was responsible for the disappearance of both wisdom & prudence in Olympus. And he could not keep his hands off all those lovely Titanesses, Giantesses, Nymphs & Mortal women whom he loved or secretly loved. He took them to wife, even when they were unwilling, such as Metis, Leto, Asteria & Nemesis. And he raped them, even when they were not aware that they were being raped, such as Alcmene, Danae, Io & Europa. And these were only a few of his many love affairs that Hera knew. What he had managed to keep secret from Hera was his greatest love affair of all- his affair with the Goddess of Love, which had already resulted in the mis-begetting of the monstrous love-child, Priapus. — Nicholas Chong

The beauty of self realization lies in secretly working out within you everything that is virtuous, that is beautiful, that is joyful. — Nirmala Srivastava

My mind still buzzed with the cares of a busy day; I sat on without noting how twilight
was deepening into dark.
Suddenly light stirred across the gloom and touched me as with a finger.
I lifted my head and met the gaze of the full moon widened in wonder like a child's. It held my eyes for long, and I felt as though a love-letter had been secretly dropped in at my window.
And ever since my heart is breaking to write for answer something fragrant as Night's unseen flowers - great as her declaration spelt out in nameless stars. — Rabindranath Tagore

Could you try not aiming so much?" he asked me, still standing there. "If you hit him when you aim, it'll just be luck." He was speaking, communicating, and yet not breaking the spell. I then broke it. Quite deliberately. "How can it be luck if I aim?" I said back to him, not loud (despite the italics) but with rather more irritation in my voice than I was actually feeling. He didn't say anything for a moment but simply stood balanced on the curb, looking at me, I knew imperfectly, with love. "Because it will be," he said. "You'll be glad if you hit his marble - Ira's marble - won't you? Won't you be glad? And if you're glad when you hit somebody's marble, then you sort of secretly didn't expect too much to do it. So there'd have to be some luck in it, there'd have to be slightly quite a lot of accident in it. — J.D. Salinger

Owllwin was easiest the most contrary person Cricket had ever known. He was arrogant but humble, cowardly but brave, foolish but wise. He was funny, but sometimes she caught him crying when he was off on his own. It were as if he pushed himself to be a better person in spite of himself, in spite of his own failings, and Cricket secretly admired the fact: not many people were willing to admit they had faults in the first place. — Ash Gray

If everyone slept with the person he or she had secretly fallen in love with, the world would be chaos. — Elin Hilderbrand

There was a time Jeff and Helen loved each other and touched each other's hands and ate breakfast in cafes together and secretly fucked in public, the way people in like do. Then came a time they made each other crazy and beat their hands on steering wheels and tore up love letters and photographs and said goodbye. — Amy Guth

Cade thought about this. "Let me get this straight - you secretly pretend to like poetry to impress the smart girl in your English class, while she's secretly pretending to like football to impress you." He paused. "That's gotta be the cutest fucking thing I've ever heard."
"I guess her subconscious finds my subconscious pretty irresistible," Zach said, all teenage confidence right then.
"You were lucky to pull that line off once, Garrity. I wouldn't push it. — Julie James

And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

These people have all developed the art of not experiencing feelings, for a child can experience her feelings only when there is somebody there who accepts her fully, understands her, and supports her. If that person is missing, if the child must risk losing the mother's love or the love of her substitute in order to feel, then she will repress her emotions. She cannot even experience them secretly, "just for herself"; she will fail to experience them at all. But they will nevertheless stay in her body, in her cells, stored up as information that can be triggered by a later event. — Alice Miller

That which they have need of ... let it be given them day by day without fail. Ezra 6:9 If we really trust God, we shall expect to bear unaided the spiritual burden both of our own needs and of those of the work. We must not secretly hope for support from some human source. Our faith is not to be in God plus man but in God alone. If brethren show their love, thank God; but if they do not, let us thank Him still. For God's servant to have one eye on Him and one eye on other men is a shameful thing, unworthy of any Christian. To profess trust in God yet to turn to the brethren for supplies is to bring only disgrace on His name. Our living by faith must be transparently real and never deteriorate into a living charity. Yes, in all material things we dare to be utterly independent of men, because we dare to believe utterly in God. We have cast away all other hope, because we have unbounded hope in Him. — Watchman Nee

Simon: So were you following me? Or is it just an amazing coincidence that you happened to be on the roof of a building I was walking by when I got attacked?
Jace: I was following you.
Simon: Is this the part where you tell me you're secretly in love with me? — Cassandra Clare

The Christian ... way of daily living must be distinct from the world. While some will think you "peculiar," do not let this disturb you, for just as many others will secretly admire you for your stand. It is possible you will be persecuted by jokes and be misunderstood ... but if you accept this with patience and in the spirit of love, God can use this very thing to help you win some of your friends [to Christ]. — Billy Graham

Okay, you have to understand I was drunk."

"So?"

"So don't believe anything I said."

"What about now?"

"I don't know. I don't trust myself around you. Talking to you is like drinking tequila. One minute I'm in control, and the next I'm - "

He holds me hard against him, then he claims my lips, brutally, violently, the way I was secretly hoping he would. And I kiss him back with so much force it nearly knocks all air from my lungs. — Elisa Marie Hopkins

Jealousy always has been my cross, the weakness and woundedness in me that has most often caused me to feel ugly and unlovable, like the Bad Seed. I've had many years of recovery and therapy, years filled with intimate and devoted friendships, yet I still struggle. I know that when someone gets a big slice of pie, it doesn't mean there's less for me. In fact, I know that there isn't even a pie, that there's plenty to go around, enough food and love and air.
But I don't believe it for a second.
I secretly believe there's a pie. I will go to my grave brandishing my fork. — Anne Lamott

I learned to stop being English about things like love. If you make a film in England about love, it's hugely complicated. It's all about saying what the weather is like, and you're secretly telling someone you love them. You know what the English are like; they're very repressed people. You don't get that in India. India is incredibly un-cynical about love. It's a not a complicated thing. It's me, you, love. Let's go. — Simon Beaufoy

One would always want to think of oneself as being on the side of love, ready to recognize it and wish it well -but, when confronted with it in others, one so often resented it, questioned its true nature, secretly dismissed the particular instance as folly or promiscuity. Was it merely jealousy, or a reluctance to admit so noble and enviable a sentiment in anyone but oneself? — Shirley Hazzard

Her heart felt as if it were breaking in her breast, bleeding and bleeding, young and fierce. From grief over the warm and ardent love which she had lost and still secretly mourned; from anguished joy over the pale, luminous love which drew her to the farthest boundaries of life on this earth. Through the great darkness that would come, she saw the gleam of another, gentler sun, and she sensed the fragrance of the herbs in the garden at world's end. — Sigrid Undset

There's a nonsensical dichotomy that exists within you after you break up with someone - especially if it's someone you loved deeply. A large part of you hopes they'll move on, be happy, follow their dreams to the fullest.
That's the side you show the world.
But a smaller part of you, whether you admit its existence or not, secretly and selfishly yearns for a reality in which that person would never move on. Never forget your love, or replace you with someone else; never be fully complete again, without you by their side.
That's the side we hide away, the innermost part of ourselves that we push down below the socially-acceptable responses to heartbreak. — Julie Johnson

Frenchwomen don't see pregnancy as a free pass to overeat, in part because they haven't been denying themselves the foods they love - or secretly binging on those foods - for most of their adult lives. "Too often, American women eat on the sly, and the result is much more guilt than pleasure," Mireille Guiliano explains in her intelligent book French Women Don't Get Fat. "Pretending such pleasures don't exist, or trying to eliminate them from your diet for an extended time, will probably lead to weight gain. — Pamela Druckerman

I think we are clinging with ever-increasing desperation to our status as children. In the hospital you see other children - children of fifty, of sixty, of seventy - clinging to their parents of eighty, ninety, one hundred. Is all this clinging love? Or is it just the need to be reassured of your own immunity from the contagion of the Moloch ha-moves - the dread Angel of Death? Because we all secretly believe in our own immortality. Since we cannot imagine the loss of individual consciousness, we cannot possibly imagine death. — Erica Jong

Remember me, even if it's only in a corner and secretly. Don't let me go. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

There wasn't a man alive in Pern who hadn't secretly cherished the notion that he might be able to Impress a dragon. That he could be linked for life to the love and sustaining admiration of these gentle great beasts. That he could transverse Pern in a twinkling, astride his dragon. That he would never suffer the loneliness that was the condition of most men - a dragonrider always had his dragon. — Anne McCaffrey

[When I was with the wrong man], it felt like our relationship was a gigantic puzzle - a huge existential and emotional quiz that, if I applied myself to enough, I would solve and gain the result of True Love. After all, the ingredients for us to be the perfect couple were there ... The problem was just that he was unhappy. I knew that. I knew it in my bones. When I found the way the way to make him happy, everything would be fine. He was broken, and I was going to fix him - then the good bit of our relationship would start to happen. We were just in the tricky, early bit of love, where I'd undo all the bad stuff and let him finally be who he was, secretly, inside. Secretly, inside, he did love me. My steadfastness would provide it. If it didn't work, it was simply because I hadn't tried hard enough. — Caitlin Moran

The books we love offer a sketch of a whole universe that we secretly inhabit, and in which we desire the other person to assume a role.
One of the conditions of happy romantic compatibility is, if not to have read the same books, to have read at least some books in common with the other person - which means, moreover, to have non-read the same books. From the beginning of the relationship, then, it is crucial to show that we can match the expectations of our beloved by making him or her sense the proximity of our inner libraries. — Pierre Bayard

The only thing a person of my age can do is fall in love secretly, silently, like
I had done with Mariana. Fall in love knowing that all is lost and there is no hope. — Jose Emilio Pacheco

He started walking our way asking, "Now a good time?" No, no time was a good time for the Ten Point Five I was secretly in love with to be in my apartment. — Kristen Ashley

I don't care about risk to me," he hissed, leaning forward across the table. "I care about what happens to you! Dammit, I'm practically indestructible. Let me go. You stay behind."
"Yes," Clary said, "Jace won't find that odd at all. You can just tell him you've always been secretly in love with him and you can't stand being parted. — Cassandra Clare

The things we love are secretly loving us in return. — Debasish Mridha

I was following you.' - Jace
'Is this the part where you tell me you're secretly in love with me? Vampire mojo strikes again.' - Simon — Cassandra Clare

Is this the part where you tell me you're secretly in love with me? Vampire mojo strikes again. — Cassandra Clare

And isn't the whole world yours? For how often you set it on fire with your love and saw it blaze and burn up and secretly replaced it with another world while everyone slept. You felt in such complete harmony with God, when every morning you asked him for a new earth, so that all the ones he had made could have their turn. You thought it would be shabby to save them and repair them; you used them up and held out your hands, again and again, for more world. For your love was equal to everything. — Rainer Maria Rilke

She sang that night like - I cannot say like an angel, for her songs were all of champagne suppers and strolling in the Burlington Arcade; perhaps, then, like a fallen angel - or yet again like a falling one: she sang like a falling angel might sing with the bounds of heaven fresh burst behind him, and hell still distant and unguessed. And as she did so, I sang with her - not loudly and carelessly like the rest of the crowd, but softly, almost secretly, as if she might hear me the better if I whispered rather than bawled. — Sarah Waters

He felt ... a suspicion-no, a conviction-than he had been abandoned, forgotten, and that no one in the whole world cared or would ever care enough about him to really find out what he was like and what his dreams were. He was an outcast, a creature somehow vastly different from all other people, an object of scorn and derision, an outsider, secretly loathed and ridiculed by everyone who met him, even by those few who professed to love him. — Dean Koontz

My requirements in a husband are simple," she informed him smoothly. "All I want is a man who will hold me above everything else, including his horse, his fortune, and his pride."
Hearing that simple yet seemingly impossible declaration was like a blow to Grey's solar plexus. She was going to be so disappointed, the poor thing. How perverted was it of him to secretly rejoice over her wants? She might find a man who could love her more than his horse, perhaps even more than his fortune, but never would she find a man willing to sacrifice his pride-not without that same man coming to hate her for it eventually.
"More than his horse?" he joked. "My dear girl, you ask too much. — Kathryn Smith

I know you're worried about me. Not because you think I am incapable but because you secretly have always worried that life would go by without my ever learning how to stomp in the puddles or fall in love. I can promise you I'll learn. If anyone is a teacher for that kind of stuff, it has got to be New York. — Hannah Brencher

He did not blame them. Because in truth, that's what he did, what he was. Seduce and dominate. Charm and manipulate. A user of women. How they would scoff, Rothbury mused bitterly, if they knew that he was secretly in love with the silly little chit, spectacles and all. — Olivia Parker

Secretly, I'm in awe of Broadway performers. I would love to perform at that level. I love the exchange with the audience. I love being able to sing and dance to express your emotions and the community and friendships that are formed when working on a theater piece. — Brianna Brown

It is impossible to think of Howard Hughes without seeing the apparently bottomless gulf between what we say we want and what we do want, between what we officially admire and secretly desire, between, in the largest sense, the people we marry and the people we love. In a nation which increasingly appears to prize social virtues, Howard Hughes remains not merely antisocial but grandly, brilliantly, surpassingly, asocial. He is the last private man, the dream we no longer admit. — Joan Didion

Now, even when I make an outfit for myself, I wonder what other people will think. The truth is that I secretly love what seems to be my own individuality, and I hope I always will, but fully embodying it is another matter. I always want everyone to think I am a good girl. Whenever I am around a lot of people, it is amazing how obsequious I can be. I fib and chatter away, saying things I don't want to or mean in any way. I feel like it is to my advantage to do so. I hate it. I hope for a revolution in ethics and morals. Then, my obsequiousness and this need to plod through life according to others' expectations would simply dissolve. Oh, — Osamu Dazai

Uri stood staring at him, casually looking Gabe's body up and down before saying with a sly grin, "Well hello to you too, sexy. Does your wife know about this?" Uri then motioned with a dainty fingertip to Gabe's ensemble.
Looking down, Gabe quickly realised the robe he had grabbed to cover himself with belonged to Rachel, and much to his dismay, was far too sheer for comfort at the moment. Slipping a well laid hand into place, Gabe huffed and looked at his friend in aggravation, secretly trying not to laugh. — Wendy Owens

Nick leans down and kisses my eyelids. "Loving you, Zara, is a full-time job. It's a great job, don't get me wrong. It's the best job in the universe. But it is not easy, because you tend to . . ."
"Get hurt?" Betty suggests. "Find trouble? Pass out? Break arms?"
"All of the above." Nick laughs.
My hand finds Nick's wrist and I grab onto its thickness. "You know, I'm the patient here. Where's the bedside manner? Where's the sympathy?"
"Zara, sympathy is just a good excuse to buy greeting cards and make sorry eyes and secretly gloat over how glad you are that you aren't the person whose crap is hanging out there for the world to see," Betty says. — Carrie Jones

The apparently bottomless gulf between what we say we want and why we do want, between what we officially admire and secretly desire, between, in the largest sense, the people we marry and the people we love. — Joan Didion

I've always heard that women secretly want their father. So I used to walk around in a 1950s business suit, with a hat and a pipe. My opening line would be, 'You should be getting to bed now.' — Conan O'Brien

sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love

(all the merry little birds are
flying in the floating in the
very spirits singing in
are winging in the blossoming)

lovers go and lovers come
awandering awondering
but any two are perfectly
alone there's nobody else alive

(such a sky and such a sun
i never knew and neither did you
and everybody never breathed
quite so many kinds of yes)

not a tree can count his leaves
each herself by opening
but shining who by thousands mean
only one amazing thing

(secretly adoring shyly
tiny winging darting floating
merry in the blossoming
always joyful selves are singing)

sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love — E. E. Cummings

It was the sea that made me begin thinking secretly about love more than anything else; you know, a love worth dying for, or a love that consumes you. To a man locked up in a steel ship all the time, the sea is too much like a woman. Things like her lulls and storms, or her caprice, or the beauty of her breast reflecting the setting sun, are all obvious. More than that, you're in a ship that mounts the sea and rides her and yet is constantly denied her. It's the old saw about miles and miles of lovely water and you can't quench your thirst. Nature surrounds a sailor with all these elements so like a woman and yet he is kept as far as a man can be from her warm, living body. That's where the problem begins, right there - I'm sure of it. — Yukio Mishima

Colin,
I hate to fulfill the Theorem, but I don't think we should be involved romantically.
The problem is that I secretly in love with Hassan.
I can't help myself. I hold your bony shoulder blades in my hands and think of his fleshy back.
I kiss your stomach and I think of his awe-inspiring gut. I like you,
Colin, I really do. But-I'm sorry. It's just not going to work.
I hope we can still be friends.
Sincerely,
Lindsey Lee Wells
P.S. Just kidding. — John Green

The Larks are the sort of people who trot out their relationships with "good Indians," whom they secretly despise and openly patronize, in order to prove their general love for Indians, whom they are engaged in cheating. — Louise Erdrich

But in the city
in which I love you,
no one comes, no one
meets me in the brick clefts;
in the wedged dark,
no finger touches me secretly, no mouth
tastes my flawless salt,
no one wakens the honey in the cells, finds the humming
in the ribs, the rich business in the recesses;
hulls clogged, I continue laden — Li-Young Lee

5. If You Love, Love Openly
Twenty monks and one nun, who was named Eshun, were practicing meditation with a certain Zen master.
Eshun was very pretty even though her head was shaved and her dress plain. Several monks secretly fell in love with her. One of them wrote her a love letter, insisting upon a private meeting.
Eshun did not reply. The following day the master gave a lecture to the group, and when it was over, Eshun arose. Addressing the one who had written her, she said: If you really love me so much, come and embrace me now. — Nyogen Senzaki

Oh, my, yes. I was raised in this Southern culture where if a guy was sarcastic, that just meant he didn't know how to show his love - but secretly he cared! I completely bought that. The men I chased and the things I put up with - it was criminal. — Ginnifer Goodwin

Children, you must understand, are monsters. They are ravenous, ravening, they lope over the countryside with slavering mouths, seeking love to devour. Even when they find it, even if they roll about in it and gorge themselves, still it will never be enough. Their hunger for it is greater than any heart to satisfy. You mustn't think poorly of them - we are all monsters that way, it is only that when we are grown, we learn more subtle ways to snatch it up, and secretly slurp our fingers clean in dark corners, relishing even the last dregs. All children know is a sort of clumsy pouncing after love. They often miss, but that is how they learn. — Catherynne M Valente

I know divers, and divers men know me, which love me as I do them: yet if I should pray them, when I meet them in the street openly, they would abhor me; but if I pray them where they be appointed to meet me secretly, they will hear me and accept my request. — William Tyndale

Q: What genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid?

A: I love reading anything about gigantic animate blobs of molten iron who secretly long to be concert pianists. It's not a particularly well-populated genre, but in particular I'd mention, "Grog, Who Loved Chopin," as well as the somewhat derivative "Clom, Big Fan of Mozart. — George Saunders

One real danger in love relationships is that most people secretly believe that they must control the love object in order to feel safe in loving and being loved. The cause of this is simple - children are made to feel that they must "give themselves up" if they are to be loved. Thus, for most humans the act of surrender has meant the loss of autonomy or worse - loss of one's own mind.
Surrender is neither control nor morbid dependency and cannot be made contingent upon giving away one's "soul"; nonetheless, the person surrendering opens completely to the moment, and runs the risk of being deeply hurt. Sadly, in our society this is not uncommon and frequently serves to harden or embitter a person toward life in general. Or, on the other had being deeply hurt in the act of surrender can lead to angry and painful "cries for help." When this occurs there is an insatiable and wrathful desire to be cared for as a child is cared for and the horrid fear of loss of independence. — Christopher S. Hyatt

I'd always secretly believed that a love as fierce and true as mine would be rewarded in the end, and now I was being forced to accept the bitter truth. — Alma Katsu

We have talked about Suzy and about her last days, but it's as if our lives stopped then and there. If I say anything to him about feeling lonesome, he goes outside and does some little chore. I can't tell if he is secretly blaming me, or himself, or just too full of pain to talk. That was the one thing we could always do together. I wish for the old days. I wish for the struggling days and the days of Geronimo, and the days of birthing Charlie with no one but Jack to help me. How happy and in love we were then. I want to be in love again, but all I feel is darkness and shadows. Everything is changed and different — Nancy E. Turner

The problem is that I am secretly in love with Hassan. I can't help myself. I hold your bony shoulder blades in my hands and think of his fleshy back (Lindsey). — John Green

When I entered the drum, why did it make my heart start pounding? In the small, cramped space, secretly, I was incredibly smitten by her.
While playing, we both decided to try and crawl into the drum. It was dark and smelled faintly of metal. Beyond the mouth of the round drum, we could see the sunlight.
If I turned around, our bodies fit into the drum exactly, and she was right there. Her breathing was echoing. The air around us was very humid.
Somehow the burning feeling in my heart came boiling over, and I put my face close to hers, and gave her a little kiss. Of course it was on the lips.
It was a gentle sensation, and it was the first time I'd ever felt such a strange emotion. She responded with the same feeling. So I kept on kissing her. They were light kisses, but my heart was beating wildly.It was an amazing first time. — Gackt

It was sort of like being in one of those love-and-horror supernatural novels, the kind Mrs. Robinson in the school library sniffily called "tweenager porn." In those books the girls dallied with werewolves, vampires - even zombies - but hardly ever became those things. It was also nice to have a grown man stand up for her, and it didn't hurt that he was handsome, in a scruffy kind of way that reminded her a little of Jax Teller on Sons of Anarchy, a show she and Emma Deane secretly watched on Em's computer. — Stephen King

There is some pressure when you are a woman doing what I do that you must support all other women unconditionally, no matter what they're projecting, or writing, or producing, or putting forth as their art. I think that's equally arbitrary and random and unfair, and kind of sexist. The secretly sexist way. I have really high standards for what I think is funny. I have that for everything, and I think it would be disingenuous of me to blanket-ly love everything a woman has produced simply to make a statement that we're all in this together. — Mindy Kaling