Thought She Loved Me Quotes & Sayings

She groaned and tucked her fingers between my side and the mattress. "I don't think I'm ever going to get used to the cold air here."
I chuckled and kissed her forehead. "Just wait 'til it snows."
"Ugh," she moaned.
"I'll turn the heat up," I said and started to move from beneath her. She clutched me closer and made a sound of determination. I laughed. It thrilled the shit out of me that she liked having me so close. "I thought you were cold," I said affectionately.
"But you're warm."
"I'll come right back."
"Kiss me," she demanded. She was definitely a shy person, but the more time we spent together, the less shy she was with me when we were alone. I loved it. It was like getting a glimpse of the person no one else saw. — Cambria Hebert

For a while I felt like I spoke a different language than my immediate family. It wasn't until my teens that I met and got to know better members of my extended family (my cousin Alma in particular) that self- identified as artists. Something in us clicked together; in the way we thought, in the language we chose to use, in what we enjoyed. She helped me see and appreciate a lot both about myself and my loved ones. — E.J. Bonilla

I said, I want to tell you something.
She said, you can tell me tomorrow.
I had never told her how much I loved her.
She was my sister.
We slept in the same bed.
There was never a right time to say it.
It was always unnecessary.
The books in my father's shed were sighing.
The sheets were rising and falling around me with Anna's breathing.
I thought about waking her.
But it was unnecessary.
There would be other nights.
And how can you say I love you to someone you love?
I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her.
Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you ... It's always necessary. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Meghan and I talked about music - she loved Ella Fitzgerald. "What about all the hip acts that college kids love? Do you like any of them?"
"Like who?"
"I don't know all their names. Snoop Diggity Do and all those hip cats." Meghan shook her head and laughed. We talked about movies - she loved anything made before 1964. No wonder I thought she was older; she was an old soul in a young body.
"So what's your favorite movie?" I asked.
"To Kill a Mockingbird." My mother would have liked Meghan. She made my father and me watch To Kill a Mockingbird with her when I was in first grade. It must have been the twentieth time she'd seen it, but she still cried at the parts that made her weepy-eyed the first nineteen times. — Donna VanLiere

I couldn't look at her. I'd been jealous and hurt, and I had dragged Liv into the middle of my own broken mess of a life. All because I thought Lena didn't love me anymore. But I was stupid, and I was wrong. Lena loved me so much, she was willing to risk everything to save me.
I had given up on Lena, after she had refused to give up on me. I owed her my life. It was as simple as that. — Kami Garcia

The poor girl ws keeping that student's letter as a precious treasure, and had run to fetch it, her only treasure, because she did not want me to go away without knowing that she, too, was honestly and genuinely loved; that she, too, was addressed respectfully. No doubt that letter was destined to lie in her box and lead to nothing. But none the less, I am certain that she would keep it all her life as a precious treasure, as her pride and justification, and now at such a minute she had thought of that letter and brought it with naive pride to raise herself in my eyes that I might see, that I, too, might think well of her. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

We weren't in love. We were in lust, Liv. I thought I loved you, but someone has taught me what real love is. She has totally opened up her heart and soul to me, and she trusts me to take care of her, to love her with no conditions. I can't even stand the thought of being away from her for more than five minutes. My heart stops when she walks into a room or when she smiles at me. When I hear her laugh, I just want to make her laugh more because it makes me feel so happy. — Kelly Elliott

I found out I was in love with you, winter before last," she said. "I wasn't going to say anything about it because - well, you know. If you'd felt anything like that for me, you'd have known I did. But it wasn't both of us. So there was no good in it. But then, when you told us you're leaving ... At first I thought, all the more reason to say nothing. But then I thought, that wouldn't be fair. To me, partly. Love has a right to be spoken. And you have a right to know that somebody loves you. That somebody has loved you, could love you. We all need to know that. [ ... ] — Ursula K. Le Guin

You are already part of a family," Desari reminded him,her body brushing his, her arms circling his waist from behind. She had materialized out of nowhere,her presence filling the healing chamber.
She was there. Completing him. His air. His heart.The part of his soul that really lived and loved and mattered. Without conscious thought he sent up a quick prayer of thanks that he had been granted such a priceless treasure when he felt so undeserving of her.
Julian loved the way she smelled. He inhaled, and her scent washed over him, clean and sexy. "This mess? With all these males?" Julian allowed a low, rumbling growl to escape. "This is no family. This is a man's nightmare."
Desari deliberately moved against him, her body soft and pliant with invitation. "Is that what you think?"
"What I think is"-Julian circled her slender throat with his large hand in mock threat- "you are deliberately tempting me when I have important, pressing business to atttend to. — Christine Feehan

The thought came to me that all one loves in art becomes beautiful. Beauty is nothing but the expression of the fact that something is being loved. Only thus could she be defined. — Robert Musil

She allowed me to understand I'd done everything I could for her, and that I, and everyone who loved her, had to step away and go on living.

Now I know what she wanted from me on the day she told me she was afraid. It was exactly what I wanted when I had cancer and I thought I was going to die. I should have sat down next to her, put my arms around her, and told her that I loved her. That's all anyone wants. It took me a long time to figure this out. It's a complicated human puzzle. But it's never too late to know that love is all you need. — Alice Hoffman

I loved a lass, a fair one,As fair as e'er was seen;She was indeed a rare one,Another Sheba queen:But, fool as then I was,I thought she loved me too:But now, alas! she's left me,Falero, lero, loo! — George Wither

The road was called Agnes weeps, after the town's first schoolteacher, who had burst into tears when she saw how plunging and twisting the road was and realized how remote the town must be. But from the first moment I laid eyes on it, I loved that road. I thought of it as a winding staircase taking me out of the traffic jams, news bulletins, bureaucrats, air-raid sirens and locked doors of city life. Jim said we should rename the road Lilly sings. — Jeannette Walls

I knew she loved me, but I wanted to hear it. The more she rejected
me, the more aggressively I fought to tear down her walls. I pushed too far sometimes ... like the camping trip. I tried to prove to her that she wasn't as autonomous as she thought. I wanted to show her that it was okay to be vulnerable and to want me. — Tarryn Fisher

She was a damn good kisser, maybe the best I'd ever had the immense pleasure of kissing. It helped that her lips were like pillows and she tasted sweet. Not like strawberries or peaches. Sunshine and sweet - her own brand of it. Plus there was desperation in the kiss, an understated but raw passion I couldn't recall ever experiencing before.
Or maybe that had been me. Maybe I'd been the passionate, desperate one. No matter. Either way, she'd stolen my breath, robbed me of thought and sense. She was a master thief, and I loved her for it. — Penny Reid

This was an old game. She thought it cute to ask if I loved her before she asked me to go get her something. — Abbi Glines

Jasmine apologized and said she was sorry and said she loved me, she couldn't believe it and said she thought it would be her. All of them were really, really sorry that it happened to me. — LaToya London

Amelia told me once about a suspicion she'd had for a while. It bothered her quite a bit. She said that Win and I had fallen ill with scarlet fever, and you made the deadly nightshade syrup, you'd concocted far more than was necessary. And you kept a cup on it on Win's nightstand, like some sort of macabre nightcap. Amelia said that if Win had died, she thought you would have taken the rest of that poison. And I've always hated you for that. Because you forced me to stay alive without the woman I loved, while you had no bloody hell intention of doing the same."
Merripen didn't answer, gave no sign that he registered Leo's words.
"Christ, man," Leo said huskily. "If you had the bollocks to die with her, don't you think you could work up the courage to live with her? — Lisa Kleypas

I held Angie Luna in that room for hours, and I remember the different times we made love like epochs in a civilization, each movement and every touch, apex upon abyss. In the luxury of our bed, we tried every position and every angle. I explored the curves on her body and delighted in seeing the freedom of her ecstasy. Her desperate whispers and pleas. I told her I loved her, and she said she loved me too. We lay in bed with our limbs entangled, in a pacific silence that reminded me of existing on a beach just for the sake of such an existence. I couldn't imagine the world ever becoming better, and for some strange reason the thought slipped into my head that I had suddenly grown to be an old man because I could only hope to repeat, but never improve on, a night like this. I finally took her home sometime when the interstate was empty, and the bridges seemed to lead to nowhere, for they were desolate too. — Sergio Troncoso

Anna Sergeyevna looked at Bazarov. A bitter smile played over his pale features. "This man loved me!" she thought - and she felt sorry for him and held out her hand to him in sympathy.
But he understood her.
"No!" he said and took a step backwards. "I'm a poor man but I've never yet taken charity. Goodbye and good luck. — Ivan Turgenev

place and I could handle anything he threw at me. Will Seeking Forgiveness I had to get a grip. I knew Ruth and Andrew were in good hands, but I wanted to be with them. I was miserable and lonely. Granddad Andrew advised me to think about what I was looking for and if I found it in Sara. Well, I thought about it and she was the one. I loved everything about her. Sara challenged me and kept me on my toes. She was a know-it-all and could debate me on — Pamela K. Marshall

In the end, the details weren't about beauty or status. They never had been, for me. They were about feeling at home in the world. And Joan hated these details. She thought my existence relentlessly tedious. What she couldn't see was that the details were life. That was how you loved someone: every day, without fail, over and over. — Anton DiSclafani

Because who knows? Who knows anything? Who knows who's pulling the strings? Or what is? Or how? Who knows if destiny is just how you tell yourself the story of your life? Another son might not have heard his mother's last words as a prophecy but as drug-induced gibberish, forgotten soon after. Another girl might not have told herself a love story about a drawing her brother made. Who knows if Grandma really thought the first daffodils of spring were lucky or if she just wanted to go on walks with me through the woods? Who knows if she even believed in her bible at all or if she just preferred a world where hope and creativity and faith trump reason? who knows if there are ghosts (sorry, Grandma) or just the living, breathing memories of your loved ones, inside you, speaking to you, trying to get your attention by any means necessary? Who knows where the hell Ralph is? (Sorry, Oscar.) No one knows.
SO we grapple with the mysteries, each in our own way. — Jandy Nelson

Travis came up behind her, his hat brim bumping her head as he nuzzled her neck. She giggled and danced away, feeling playful yet oddly shy at the same time. Travis gave chase, his husky laughter blending with hers as the two of them darted out of the barn. When they neared the porch, he grabbed her about the waist and lifted her off her feet. Meredith squealed. "You can't escape me," Travis murmured in her ear as he gently settled her back on the ground. Meredith turned in his arms to face the man she loved. "I've no desire to." His eyes darkened, and for a moment she thought he would kiss her. But then he scooped her into his arms and carried her up the porch steps. The front door proved more of a challenge to conquer. Travis had to juggle his hold on her a bit before he could get the latch open. Meredith laughed in delight, endeared by his awkward efforts. Once the door was cracked, he kicked it wide with his boot and carried her over the threshold. "Welcome home, Mrs. Archer. — Karen Witemeyer

You were not really in the area," she says now. "You look just like your father used to look when he lied to me." I laugh. "How's that?" "Like you've swallowed a lemon. Once, when your father was maybe five, he stole my nail polish remover. When I asked him about it, he lied. Eventually I found it in his sock drawer and told him so. He became hysterical. Turned out he read the label and thought it would make me - someone Polish - disappear. He hid it before it could do its job." Nana smiles. "I loved that boy, — Jodi Picoult

She dared to cry? On this day of all days? I was the one who would be married at sunset, and I hadn't let myself cry in five years.
There was ice in my lungs and in my heart. I was floating. I was swept away, and out of the cold I spoke to her in a voice as soft as snow, the gentle and obedient voice I had used to consent to every order that Father and Aunt Telomache ever gave me, every order that they would never give Astraia because they actually loved her.
"You know, that Rhyme is a lie that Aunt Telomache only told you because you weren't strong enough to bear the truth."
I had thought the words so often, they felt like nothing in my mouth, like no more than a breath of air, and as easily as breathing I went on.
"The truth is, Mother died because of you, and now I have to die for your sake, too. And neither one of us will ever forgive you."
Then I shoved her aside and strode out of the room. — Rosamund Hodge

I smiled at her, but that brooding cloud still hung over me, even as I lay there so full of happiness. I had never thought I could love another person this much. I also never thought I'd live in such fear of losing another person. Was that how everyone in love felt? Did they all cling tightly to their beloved and wake up terrified in the middle of the night, afraid of being alone? Was that an inevitable way of life when you loved so deeply? Or was it just those of us who walked on a precipice who lived in such a panic?
I brought my face a mere whisper from hers. "I love you so much."
She blinked in that way I'd come to recognize, when she was afraid she might cry. "I love you too. Hey." She slid one of her hands up and rested it on my cheek. "Don't look like that. Everything's going to be okay. The center will hold."
"How do you know?"
"Because we are the center. — Richelle Mead

If he hadn't lied to you, he would have been a different person than he is.' She is trying to get me to see that although I thought I loved this man very completely for exactly who he was, I was in fact blind to the man he actually was, or is. — Maggie Nelson

Did you send Attolia to me at the farewell?" Eddis asked.
"Not I," said Gen quietly. "The magus. I thought you knew that you loved him - the two of you have been like magnets drawing ever nearer to each other since you met - but the magus was concerned. He thought the grief of leave-taking might surprise you."
"I feel very stupid." She leaned back into his embrace. "'I look forward to hearing of your adventures.'" She shook her head in disgust and sniffed. "I should have had something better to say, something ... more appropriate."
He couldn't disagree. Sounis had clearly hoped for some message of her affection to carry with him. "You could write him a letter," he said. "A fast horse will catch him before he reaches the pass. — Megan Whalen Turner

One day, one of my teachers at the Abbey asked me what I did on my [5]free afternoons when I was alone. I told her I went behind my bed in an empty space which was there, and that it was easy to close myself in with my bed curtain and that "I thought." "But what do you think about?" she asked. "I think about God, about life, about ETERNITY ... I think!" The good religious laughed heartily at me, and later on she loved reminding me of the [10]time when I thought, asking me if I was still thinking. I understand now that I was making mental prayer without knowing it and that God was already instructing me in secret. — Therese De Lisieux

I'm not holding out a whole lot of hope for you," she snapped. "And quit calling me that. I liked it when I thought you loved me, but I'm not particularly fond of your endearments right now. Or you, for that matter. — Shannon MacLeod

Do you remember how your mom would wrap the presents so well it'd take at least five minutes to find where you could rip the paper?"
I snorted. "Yes, and they were wrapped so much it was like unwrapping a hundred packages from morning 'til lunch. It was Mom's way of extending Christmas."
"I loved that - it always built the excitement. Just when you thought you had it, you had to unroll it. I miss her - she was like a second mother to me. — Shaye Evans

I've always loved that three, I thought to myself as I watched her run her fingers around the trunk. Her eyes lifted to take it all in. She had always connected with that tree too, making it the perfect location for the swing I'd made for her. The swing that I'd hoped would keep her coming back here. Back to me. — Rebecca Donovan

Did you ever think she was your mate?" Lucas asked unable to help himself.
Clyde tensed, seemingly caught off-guard by the question. "I knew she wasn't mine," he said then exhaled. "Angels don't mate, remember?"
"Then why did you make it so hard for her?"
"For her or for you?"
"For her. I couldn't care less how hard you made it for me."
"Because I love her," Clyde responded simply. Lucas' jaw clenched then he exhaled, acknowledging that hearing another man admit he loved Jenna would never get easier.
"Not the way you do, but I love her. I wanted what was best for her. I thought you weren't it," Clyde added then turned to walk away. He paused and spun back around. "One more thing. If you ever hurt her, I'll kill you."
Lucas let the fire in his heart fill his eyes. He would never hurt Jenna; they both knew it. "I know. That's one of the reasons I haven't killed you myself. — J.L. Sheppard

As it was, she gave him the single most important gift a parent can give - "a sense of unconditional love that was big enough that, with all the surface disturbances of our lives, it sustained me, entirely." People wonder about his calm and even-keeled manner, the [P]resident observed. He credited the temperament he was born with and the fact that "from a very early age, I always felt I was loved and that my mother thought I was special. — Janny Scott

I think he became a man who brought peace and wisdom to hi world, because he knew about war and folly. I think that he loved greatly, because he had seen what lost love is. And I think he came to know, too, that he was loved greatly." She looked at the strawberry in her hands. "But I thought you didn't want me to tell you your future. — Gary D. Schmidt

I love you Tory. I know I say it a lot, but ... "
"I know baby. I feel the same way about you. Those words never convey what goes through my mind and heart every time I look up and see you sitting in my house. Funny thign is, I always thought my house was full and that there was nothing missing in my life. I had a job I loved. Family who loved me. Good friends to keep me sane. Everything a human could want. And t hen I met an infuriating, impossible man who added the one thing I didn't know wasn't there."
"Dirty socks on the floor?"
She laughed. "No, the other part of my heart. The last face I see before I go to sleep and the first one I see when I get up. I'm so glad it was you."
Those words both thrilled and scared him. Mostly because he knew firsthand that if love went untended it turned into profound hatred.
Tory and Acheron — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I believe we must do things in our lives for the right reasons, because we enjoy doing them, with no expectation of getting something back in return. Otherwise, we are constantly being disappointed." She moved her turquoise bracelet back and forth on her wrist. "So I had two sons, John and Richard, because I wanted to, not because I thought they would rescue me in old age. I got out of all social organizations and clubs in my fifties so I could spend time with my grandchildren, not because they would give something back to Jack and me later on, but because that was what I wanted to do
and I have loved doing it. Believe me, these have been selfish decisions. — Terry Tempest Williams

... .I thought we'd be okay apart, but I was sorely mistaken. I don't need much, Haven, but I do need you."
"I need you, too, you know," she said. "You make me feel safe."
Despite everything, she trusted him. She believed in him. She loved him.
And he loved her . . . more than anything in the world. She had given herself to him again, every barrier between them broken down. All of those unanswered questions, all of the worry, every single bit of it had been resolved the moment they came back together.
"Haven," he said. "If I could have anything, I know what I'd ask for now."
She pulled back from their hug to look at him with genuine curiosity. "What?"
Carmine took a step back, reaching around his neck to pull off the gold chain. He unfastened it, removing the small ring, and eyed it in his palm momentarily before dropping to his knee.
"If I could have anything in the world, it would be for you to marry me. — J.M. Darhower

I have Marvin Gaye's driver's license. His wife sent it to me, because she really loved my 'Happy People' record. She said that she thought it represented the sprit of her husband. The license is from California. I get inspired every time I look at it. — R. Kelly

Love makes you weak. This I know for sure.
Mom loved Roger. Roger loved Mom.And look what happpened there. She died. She thought her love made her strong. She kept telling me-after she was diagnosed-she ket telling me, I'm going to beat this Kyra. I'm going to come out of it. I love you and I love your father and that love is my strength. You're my strength. — Barry Lyga

As Robin thought about what he had just said, Noah got up from the chair and knelt down in front of her. 'How about I give you three reasons? Morning, day, and night.'
She narrowed her eyes.
'Stay ... so every morning when I open my eyes, you'll be the first thing I see. Stay ... so every day when I'm with you, I can show you all over again exactly how much you mean to me. And stay ... so every night when you lay your head down next to mine, you'll know ... you'll know just how much you're loved.'
Her eyes drifted to the water as she thought for a moment, returning to look deep into Noah's eyes.
'Okay, Noah ... I'll stay. — Sebastian Cole

I thought that what I felt for you was right," Luce said. "I loved you until it hurt me, until our love was consumed by your pride and rage. The thing you called love made me disappear. So I had to stop loving." She Paused. "Our adoration never diminished the Throne, but your love diminished me. I never meant to hurt you. I only meant to stop you from hurting me. — Lauren Kate

She was a river, not a stone, and every day was another curve in tomorrow's plain. She was pulled from a family she loved, and that loved her, she thought, until they took the word of a man, a friend and neighbour, who raped her. Years later, when she killed the rapist and went on the run, she severed every connection to her own life. She was runaway tough, a dancing cat, a green witch, and safe from everything but herself, like me. — Gregory David Roberts

My grandmother, whom I adored, and who partly raised me, loved Liberace, and she watched Liberace every afternoon, and when she watched Liberace, she'd get dressed up and put on makeup because I think she thought if she could see Liberace, Liberace could see her. — Alan Furst

My first car was kind of sad. My first car was when my parents had completely worn out their Toyota Corolla that they had for 16 years or something. They gave me, for my 19th birthday, this really ancient Toyota. So that was my first car. And I loved it. I thought it was amazing, and I drove it cross-country. It was not aesthetically appealing in any way. It was it fast. It did not handle well, but it lasted forever. I drove cross-country and back, and then I gave it to my sister, and she drove it for another 10 years. — Ethan Hawke

It isn't that she's given me to you
it is that she's given you to yourself ... Don't you see ... that that's the gift you can't escape from, the debt you're pledged to acquit? Don't you see that you've never before been what she thought you, and that now, so wonderfully, she's made you into the man she loved? That's worth suffering for, worth dying for, to a woman
that's the gift she would have wished to give! — Edith Wharton

She hummed to herself because she was an unrivaled botcher of lyrics. When we were first dating, a Genesis song came on the radio: "She seems to have an invisible touch, yeah." And Amy crooned instead, "She takes my hat and puts it on the top shelf." When I asked her why she'd ever think her lyrics were remotely, possibly, vaguely right, she told me she always thought the woman in the song truly loved the man because she put his hat on the top shelf. I knew I liked her then, — Gillian Flynn

The sickest part of this whole story is that I tried really hard to make up for what I thought I did to her, after she started talking to me again. I loaned her money whenever she needed it, I gave her rides whenever she called and needed to get somewhere, I did my best to pretend like David wasn't in the room with us when I was at her house, I did whatever I could that I thought might show her that I loved her and cared about her, and I never meant to hurt her. It took a while before I realized that would never happen. She'd never love me like a mom is supposed to. She would never be there for me like I tried to be for her. She would never apologize for anything or admit that she was wrong. — Ashly Lorenzana

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

Maybe," thought Francie, "she doesn't love me as much as she loves Neeley. But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. — Betty Smith

Jamie was more than just the woman I loved. In the year Jamie helped me become the man I am today. With her steady hand she showed how important it was to help others; with her patience and kindness she showed me what life really is all about. Her cheerfulness and optimism, even in times of sickness, was the most amazing thing I have ever witnessed ...
Jamie also thought me the value of forgiveness and the transforming power it offers ...
Jamie was not only the angel who saved Tom Thornton, she was the angel who saved us all. — Nicholas Sparks

I would have loved to be a fly on the wall when she walked in on you two."
"Thanks for your compassion," I say dryly. "I'm hanging up now."
"No! I'm sorry for laughing. It's just that the more we talk, the more I see you as a totally different person than I thought you were. I guess I can understand why Alex likes you."
"Thanks, I think. Remember when I told you I wouldn't let anything happen between me and Alex?"
"Yeah. Just so I get my timetable straight, that was before you kissed him. Right?" She chuckles, then says, "I'm just kidding, Brittany. If you like him, girl, go for it. — Simone Elkeles

Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness. To-night at least, I would be her guest-as I was her child; my mother would lodge me without money and without price. — Charlotte Bronte

I have loved you in your own language, Kaela thought as she picked up her blades, so softly that we never knew it. Let your language be mine; let me cast my own shadows. — Yoon Ha Lee

Oh! that look of love!" continued he, between his teeth, as he bolted himself into his own private room. "And that cursed lie; which showed some terrible shame in the background, to be kept from the light in which I thought she lived perpetually! Oh, Margaret, Margaret! Mother, how you have tortured me! Oh! Margaret, could you not have loved me? I am but uncouth and hard, but I would never have led you into any falsehood for me. — Elizabeth Gaskell

Do you think you should warn him (the guard) that I'm going to kiss you?"
He loved the flush that appeared on her face, and there was an intake of breath from the girls.
"Aldron," she said clearing her throat,"if he agrees to become king, I'm going to let him kiss me. Please don't stop him."
Aldron thought for a moment and sighed, holding up his hand. "Wait there and do not move," he ordered Finnikin, before calling out to one of the other guards who stood on the platform. "Ask Perri if he's allowed to touch her if he's agreed to be king. — Melina Marchetta

There are so many things to grieve ... All the dogs & cats & birds & snakes we have loved & lost, & old lovers, but what else? ... it took me forever to see that one of them was my own daughter, my baby, a young woman I thought of only as a girl, a child, & there she was, suddenly a woman, & I felt this ache gnaw at me as if I hadn't eaten in a year ... I stood there watching my daughter gesture & move & laugh with the grace of a grown-up, & I just started crying like a baby. It wasn't unlike the same type of sorrow we all feel when we realize something we once had that was very precious is not longer there. That it is forever lost, changed, deceased. Like a baby, gone, except in your memory ... My own daughter is now a woman. I get it. Another passage, another form of loss, another reason to grieve, another part of this life process. — Kris Radish

I just wasn't able to say it before now.'
He blinked. 'You needed to knee a man in the groin before you could tell me you loved me?'
'No!' Then she thought about his words. 'Well, yes, in a way. I've always been so fearful that you would run my life. But I've learned that having you with me doesn't mean that I can't take care of myself as well.'
'You certainly made short work of Eversleigh.'
Her chin lifted a notch and she allowed herself a satisfied smile. 'Yes, I did, didn't I? And do you know, but I think I couldn't have done it without you.'
'Victoria, you did this all on your own. I wasn't even present.'
'Yes, you were.' She picked up his hand and placed it over her heart. — Julia Quinn

Her voice was trained, supple as leather, precise as a knife thrower's blade. Singing or talking, it had the same graceful quality, and an accent I thought at first was English, but then realized was the old-fashioned American of a thirties movie, a person who could get away with saying 'grand.' Too classic, they told her when she went out on auditions. It didn't mean old. It meant too beautiful for the times, when anything that lasted longer than six months was considered passe. I loved to listen to her sing, or tell me stories about her childhood in suburban Connecticut, it sounded like heaven. — Janet Fitch

In the end it was Shadowhunting they had bonded over - a shared
love of sharp-edged weapons, gleaming seraph blades, the painful
pleasure of burning Marks, the thought-numbing swiftness of battle.
When Alec had wanted to go out hunting alone with Jace, leaving Izzy
behind, Jace had spoken up for her: "We need her with us; she's the
best there is. Aside from me, of course."
She had loved him just for that. — Cassandra Clare

That Sindy. She was so damn smart. But I never told her that. I also never told her that I loved her, or that I loved the two little stretch marks she got from carrying Vera. Or that I loved that freckle on her forehead. I never told her that I loved her lasagna or that I thought her views on politics were clever. I just kept my mouth shut because I thought that made me safe. — A.S. King

Melly is the only woman friend I ever had," she thought forlornly, "the only woman except Mother who really loved me. She's like Mother, too. Everyone who knew her has clung to her skirts. — Margaret Mitchell

He rolled her over, rising above her, cupping her cheek. "I wasn't lying, Loree. I've always heard the music in my heart ... but I lost the ability to do that when I went to prison. It was like the music just shriveled up and died. I thought I'd never hear it again. How could I play the violin if I couldn't hear the music? Then lately, I started going crazy because I'd hear snatches of music - when you'd look at me or smile at me. But I couldn't grab onto it, I couldn't hold it. Then last night, you told me that you loved me and I heard the music, so sweet, so soft. It scared me to hear it so clearly after I hadn't for so long.
"Tonight, I hurt you - again. I was going to let you go, Loree. I was gonna take you back to Austin. But I heard my heart break ... and I knew that's all I'd hear for the rest of my life. Don't leave me, Sugar."
Joy filled her and she brushed the locks of hair back off his brow. "I won't."
-Austin and Loree — Lorraine Heath

Knowing Lissa missed me hurt almost more than if she'd completely written me off. I'd never wanted to hurt her. Even when I'd resented her for feeling like she was controlling my life, I'd never hated her. I loved her like a sister and couldn't stand the thought of her suffering now on my behalf. How had things gotten so screwed up between us? — Richelle Mead

Some say I loved her to the point of madness, bordering on obsession. She said I put her on a pedestal that her real self couldn't attain. Perhaps they're all right. Perhaps I am mad. And if that's the case, to be frank, I don't give a damn. What I know is that she sets me on fire, and if you were to perform an intradermal test on me, you'd know when she was in it because you'd see the trails of blaze she left behind. Because that's what I feel at the mere thought of her, and I'd rather live my life in flames than be numb without her." He paused, and I let out a breath, but then he said one last thing. "Come back to me, my little Road Runner, my world is cold and boring without you. — Claire Contreras

I squeezed her hand and said nothing. I knew little about Keats or his poetry, but I thought it possible that in his hopeless situation he would not have wanted to write precisely because he loved her so much. Lately I'd had the idea that Clarissa's interest in these hypothetical letters had something to do with our own situation, and with her conviction that love that did not find its expression in a letter was not perfect. In the months after we'd met, and before we'd bought the apartment, she had written me some beauties, passionately abstract in the ways our love was different from and superior to any that had ever existed. Perhaps that's the essence of a love letter, to celebrate the unique. I had tried to match her, but all that sincerity would permit me were the facts, and they seemed miraculous enough to me: a beautiful woman loved and wanted to be loved by a large, clumsy, balding fellow who could hardly believe his luck. — Ian McEwan

The only thing that really inspired me for singing was the movie and musical 'Phantom of the Opera.' I went to see it in the theaters, and I loved it so much. And when I got home, I started singing the songs around the house, and my mom thought I was really good, so she asked me if I wanted to do a talent competition. And I said, 'Yes, definitely.' — Jackie Evancho

But here's the thing Ona. Howard wrote that song for you.' Quinn had never been more sure of anything. 'I think he wrote all his songs for you, Ona, for young and lovely you.'
'Now you're talking foolish.'
'He wrote them for you, and you refused them because he didn't know how to give them to you.' How could he, living his shadow of a life, floundering in the sludge of grief and failure?
'Have you been drinking?'
'Listen to me,' he said. 'You 're the glittering girl with the cherry-wood hair. You're the angel's breath and sunlight.'
'Oh, for heaven's sake.' She sat up crossly, her tufted hair seeming to quiver. 'Quinn Porter,' she said, 'I never took you for a romantic.'
'Howard Stanhope loved you,' he declared. 'I thought you should know.'
'Well, all right.'
'I thought you should know, Ona.'
'Thank you.'
'People should know these things — Monica Wood

She knew that my memories of her would fade. Which is precisely why she begged me never to forget her, to remember that she had existed.
The thought fills me with an almost unbearable sorrow. Because Naoko never loved me. — Haruki Murakami

I loved Emma.' The words, so flat and final, explode into the air. 'But she lied to me. I thought perhaps I could have the love without the lies. With you, I mean. Do you remember your application letter? How you talked about integrity and honesty and trust? That was what made me think it might work, that it might be better this time. But I've never loved you the way I loved her. — J.P. Delaney

Here, take this, she would say, take this, and tell me where he is. Tell me whether he's dead or alive, so I can walk as his widow or his wife.
No one would, or could, tell her, and so she continued to cook, and to learn new things all the while searching for an answer among the outcasts.
The way he carried his body, the way he walked in my life, Tatiana thought, declared that he was the only man I had ever loved, and he knew it.
And until I was alone without him, I thought it was all worth it. — Paullina Simons

Until Della walked into my life I didn't understand the idea of love. I had never been in love and experienced very little love in my life. But I'd seen it once. My grandparents had loved each other until the day they died. I thought it was a myth. Then I met Della. She got under my skin and then she began to open emotions in me I didn't know existed. There is no pretense with her. She has no idea she's beautiful and she's completely selfless. But even if she weren't all those things her laugh and the look in her eyes when she's truly happy is the only thing that matters in life — Abbi Glines

I don't remember waking up that Sunday morning - - perhaps I never slept. Iwas just sitting up in bed watching Sarah sleep. She'd slept naked in my bed but she hadn't let me have sex with her. I didn't care. I loved watching her sleep. The light was falling through my window, all over the blue sheets of my old bed, and onto her face. I lifted up the sheets and watched her breasts move with her breath. They seemed to be sleeping themselves.
I hoped that she wouldn't wake up. I laid the sheet back over her, right up to her chin.
I looked up and out of my room.
I thought, This must be what praying is like. — Ethan Hawke

He wrapped his arms around her waist and looked at her through those intense brown eyes she loved. "I wanted you when I thought you'd pull a bag over my head and snuff out my life. I wanted you more than I've wanted anything. I love you more than I've loved anyone. You burst into my life like sunshine and made me see how lonely I was. I don't want to live that way anymore." He pressed a kiss to her hairline. "I will love you with my last breath. — Rachel Gibson

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

Do you really like to read that much?" she asked as we ambled our way casually in the dark toward the piazzetta. I looked at her as if she had asked me if I loved music, or bread and salted butter, or ripe fruit in the summertime. "Don't get me wrong," she said. "I like to read too. But I don't tell anyone." At last, I thought, someone who speaks the truth. I asked her why she didn't tell anyone. "I don't know ... " This was more her way of asking for time to think or to hedge before answering, "People who read are hiders. They hide who they are. People who hide don't always like who they are." "Do you hide who you are?" "Sometimes. Don't you?" "Do I? I suppose. — Andre Aciman

About half a mile from the tunnel, Sam stopped the car, and I climbed in back. Patrick played the radio really loud so I could hear it, and as we were approaching the tunnel, I listened to the music and tought about all the things that people have said to me over the past year. I thought about Bill telling me I was special. And my sister saying she loved me. And my mom, too. And even my dad and brother when I was in the hospital. I thought about Patrick calling me his friend. And I thought about Sam telling me to do things. To really be there. and I just thought how great it was to have friends and a family. — Stephen Chbosky

Tell me," she finally whispered, "is it fun for you to torture me? ... I should really hate you. Ever since we have known each other, you have given me nothing but suffering ... " Her voice trembled, she leaned toward me, and lowered her head onto my breast.
"Perhaps," I thought, "this is exactly why you loved me: joys are forgotten, but sadness, never ... — Mikhail Lermontov

I thought you loved your husband." She blows air through her nose.
The action reminds me of an agitated horse. Her eyes rove from my shoes and land in disgust on my face. "I love yours too. — Tarryn Fisher

Love has different shades. Like the way I loved Cassia when I thought she'd never love me. The way I loved her on the Hill. The way I love her now that she came into the canyon for me. It's different. Deeper. I thought I loved her and wanted her before, but as we walk through the canyon together I realize this could be more than a new shade. A whole new color. — Ally Condie

I might have been a fuckup and a failure and a disappointment, but I wasn't a liar.
I did lie to Belly, though. Just that one time in that crappy motel. I did it to protect her. That's what I kept telling myself. Still, if there was one moment in my life I could redo, one moment out of all the shitty moments, that was the one I'd pick. When I thought back to the look on her face - the way it just crumpled, how she'd sucked in her lips and wrinkled her nose to keep the hurt from showing - it killed me. God, if I could, I'd go back to that moment and say all the right things, I'd tell her I loved her, I'd make it so that she never look that way again. — Jenny Han

This maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me. — Edgar Allan Poe

He had but one consolation, that she had loved him, that her eyes had told him so, that although she did not know his name she knew his heart, and that perhaps, wherever she now was, in whatever undiscoverable place, she loved him still. Perhaps she even thought of him constantly as he did of her. Sometimes, in those unaccountable moments known to every lover, when the heart feels a strange stirring of delight although there is not cause for anything but grief, he reflected: 'It is her own thoughts that are reaching me! ... And perhaps my thoughts are reaching her!'
Fancies such as these, which an instant later he brushed aside, nevertheless sufficed to kindle a glow in him which was something near to hope. — Victor Hugo

Hostage? She's holding me hostage. She has my guts in her hands. I don't care about the company, I care about her. She's my life, do you understand? Have you ever loved a woman? Have you ever held her at night so tight because you couldn't sleep thinking something might happen to her? Have you ever built a future around a woman? Ever thought of every tomorrow, every year, every decade with her? Dreamed of your old age holding her hand? I can only function with her in my life. I can only breathe if I know she's there. I gave her my fucking soul and she threw it away. Months ago, maybe years ago. She made a decision to throw me away. She's prepared for this divorce, and I'm swinging in the wind. Raw. With nothing. No defenses. Now what am I supposed to do?" I stood and threw my coat over my shoulders. "This is not about money. It's not about some publishing company. Not for me. If I don't do this, I have no chance of recovery. I'm as good as dead." ~Adam — C.D. Reiss

44. [...] later that afternoon, a therapist will say to me, "If he hadn't lied to you, he would have been a different person than he is." She is trying to get me to see that although I thought I loved this man very completely for exactly who he was, I was in fact blind to the man he actually was, or is.
45. This pains me enormously. She presses me to say why; I can't answer. Instead I say something about how clinical psychology forces everything we call love into the pathological or the delusional or the biologically explicable, that if what I was feeling wasn't love then I am forced to admit that I don't know what love is, or, more simply, that I loved a bad man. How all of these formulations drain the blue right out of love and leave an ugly, pigmentless fish flapping on a cutting board on a kitchen counter. — Maggie Nelson

If she'd said she loved me and still did all those cruel and careless things, would my child mind have decided to accept that as the definition of love?
Probably.
Would I have ended up believing that love was manipulative and hurtful and full of pain, gotten use to being shoved aside, sworn at and disregarded, picked up and hugged, and then slapped around for getting in the way, starved and smiled at, neglected and cursed, told I was no good and would never amount to anything, then hefted high and proudly shown off down at the Walmart, introduced as a little pisser and a big mistake in the same breath?
Yes, I would have, because if she said she loved me and then acted that way I would have thought that was how you loved someone, and how someone should love you back. — Laura Wiess

I had hoped to make her strong and healthy, and now she may be too weak herself after this slow death, like my father's slow long death, to come to me. and I am here, futile, cut off from the ritual of family love and neighborhood and from giving strength and love to my dear brave grandmother's dying whom I loved above thought. and my mother will go, and there is the terror of having no parents, no older seasoned beings, to advise and love me in this world. — Sylvia Plath

There is this quote that I read a long time ago. A quote that I loved and made me feel strong. It had stuck with me over the years, like so many of the other words by the author.
And though she be but little, she be fierce.-Shakespeare
I thought about that quote right now.
I might be little. I might be easily intimidated, but I could be fierce.
I was fierce. — Cambria Hebert

It hadn't occurred to me that my mother would die. Until she was dying, the thought had never entered my mind. She was monolithic and insurmountable, the keeper of my life. She would grow old and still work in the garden. This image was fixed in my mind, like one of the memories from her childhood that I made her explain so intricately that I remembered it as if it were mine. She would be old and beautiful like the black-and-white photo of Georgia O'Keeffe I'd once sent her. I held fast to this image for the first couple of weeks after we left the Mayo Clinic, and then, once she was admitted to the hospice wing of the hospital in Duluth, that image unfurled, gave way to the others, more modest and true. I imagined my mother in October; I wrote the scene in my mind. And then the one of my mother in August and another in May. Each day that passed, another month peeled away. — Cheryl Strayed

I've never had sex," repeated Artemis. "Never wanted to." It was her turn not to look at him as she spoke. "Not with a man or with a woman, or with an animal, though my family joke about it. And I never will. The thought of it disgusts me. But the others - my family - they think that means I haven't got any feelings. That I could never care about anyone, that I don't know what love is, just because I don't-" she shuddered. "But you know what?" she said, turning to him now. "I really loved my dogs. Everyone laughs at me for it, but it's true. The time I spent with them, running, hunting, those were the happiest times of my life. They understood me. They were animals but they understood me far better than anyone in my family ever will. We shared something, we were the same. And they made me kill them. — Marie Phillips

She'd always hated that. People who thought they knew her, who loved to tell her who she was and what she wanted, who swore they knew better than her own inner heart when she said No. No, that's not me at all. — Cole McCade

She thought of what it would be like to grow up without the one certainty that every baby deseved - when I'm hurt or cold or scared, someone will come and care for me - and how that absence could warp you so that you'd lash out at the people you loved, driving them away when all you wanted to do was pull them closer. — Jennifer Weiner

And there was somewhere inside me the thought: By Jove! this is the deuce of an adventure - something you read about; and it is my first voyage as second mate - and I am only twenty - and here I am lasting it out as well as any of these men, and keeping my chaps up to the mark. I was pleased. I would not have given up the experience for worlds. I had moments of exultation. Whenever the old dismantled craft pitched heavily with her counter high in the air, she seemed to me to throw up, like an appeal, like a defiance, like a cry to the clouds without mercy, the words written on her stern: Judea, London. Do or Die. O youth! The strength of it, the faith of it, the imagination of it! To me she was not an old rattle-trap carting around the world a lot of coal for a freight - to me she was the endeavor, the test, the trial of life. I think of her with pleasure, with affection, with regret - as you would think of someone dead you have loved. I shall never forget her. — Joseph Conrad

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

I thought about my mother, and the words she said to me almost a lifetime ago. That's when it clicked: she had asked me not to settle, to fight for the person I loved, and for the first time, I did what she expected of me. I had finally lived up to who she wanted me to be. — Jamie McGuire

I'm going to die with Alexander's hand on my face, Tatiana thought. That is not a bad way to die. I cannot move. I can't get up. Just can't. She closed her eyes and felt herself drifting. Through the haze in front of her she heard Alexander's voice. Tatiana, I love you. Do you hear me? I love you like I've never loved anyone in my whole life. Now, get up. For me, Tatia. For me, please get up and go take care of your sister. Go on. And I'll take care of you. — Paullina Simons

Want me to sell my soul, just so I can go gold. You can have the cars, clothes the jewerlies, the houses and hos. Cats do anything for a little bit of fame and a little bit of change. Industry snakes, they ain't friendly. Thought she loved me, she just tricked me. — Bow Wow

She never even told me how she felt," Valerie thought aloud, feeling the betrayal in her gut. How had she been so blind? Her sister had loved Henry silently. Did she know about the engagement? Did she overhear our parents planning? Valerie supposed it was possible, but it seemed unlikely since they were always together. Would it have broken her heart?
"Don't worry, you poor child," Madame Lazar said, seeming almost disinterested in the subject of Lucie's death. "I know you're worried about your sister, but Henry always had his eye on you. You are - were always the pretty one. — Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

Phoebe asked me, "Tell me, what do you think of the afterlife?"
I was a bit nonplussed. I had no idea what she thought, but I knew that the question must be of greater interest to someone of her age than to me. But our conversation had been completely honest, and before I could speak, honesty and tact had joined hands in my answer. "I have no faith at all," I said, "but sometimes I have hope."
I rather think," she replied, "that total annihilation is the most comfortable position."
I was shaken. The horse clopped on. The children laughed behind us.
When I die," she said, "I don't expect to see any of my loved ones again. I'll just become a part of all this." She waved her hand at the surrounding countryside. "That's all right with me. — Sena Jeter Naslund