Used To Be Love Quotes & Sayings

Katniss isn't the kind of hero we're used to seeing in fiction. She reacts more than she acts, she doesn't want to be a leader, and by the end of Mockingjay, she hasn't come into her own or risen like a phoenix from the ashes for some triumphant moment that gives us a sense of satisfaction with how far our protagonist has come.
She's not a Buffy. She's not a Bella. She limps across the finish line when we're used to seeing heroes racing; she eases into a quiet, steady love instead of falling fast and hard. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one. — Toni Morrison

A friend and I prepared a video clip once for a worship service. Our goal was to capture people's responses to the word Christian, so we took a video camera and hit the streets, from the trendy arts district to the suburbs. We asked people to say the first word that came to mind in response to each word we said: "snow," "eagles" (it's Philly), "teenagers," and finally "Christian." When people heard the word Christian, they stopped in their tracks. I will never forget their responses: "fake," "hypocrites," "church," "boring." One guy even said, "used-to-be-one" (sort of one word). I will also never forget what they didn't say. Not one of the people we asked that day said "love." No one said "grace." No one said "community. — Shane Claiborne

The quick ticket to ecstasy is to catch yourself feeling in a very low state of mind
depressed, stupid, hateful
and to love yourself for feeling that way. When you do that you can experience a rocket ride right to the top. Love does not take time; it's possible to transform depression into ecstasy in a flash. But please do not accept my word for it. Try it as an experiment next time you are feeling low.
Something else to consider is that we will always be in the process of remembering how to love ourselves, then forgetting, then remembering again. It does not seem to be our destiny to be any one way all the time. So let's get used to being pendulums and enjoy the ride. — Gay Hendricks

But then of course I know perfectly well that He can't be used as a road. If you're approaching Him not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you're not really approaching Him at all. That's what was really wrong with all those popular pictures of happy reunions 'on the further shore'; not the simple-minded and very earthly images, but the fact that they make an End of what we can get only as a by-product of the true End.
Lord, are these your real terms? Can I meet H. again only if I learn to love you so much that I don't care whether I meet her or not? — C.S. Lewis

Hey, there, Kizuki, I thought. Unlike you, I've chosen to live - and to live the best I know how. Sure, it was hard for you. What the hell, it's hard for me. Really hard. And all because you killed yourself and left Naoko behind. But that's something I will never do. I will never, ever, turn my back on her. First of all, because I love her, and because I'm stronger than she is. And I'm just going to keep on getting stronger. I'm going to mature. I'm going to be an adult. Because that's what I have to do. I always used to think I'd like to stay 17 or 18 if I could. But not any more. I'm not a teenager any more. I've got a sense of responsibility now. I' m not the same person I was when we used to hang out together. I'm 20 now. And I have to pay the price to go on living. — Haruki Murakami

I absolutely fell in love with David Cristofanos writing. THE GIRL SHE USED TO BE is that rare novel
its the one youve been looking for when you wander the bookstore aisles, hoping to find something that will grab hold of you and not let go. Eloquent, haunting, and totally enthralling, I was swept in from page one. — Johanna Edwards

Ours is certainly not an old culture. Yet in recent decades we've used more energy, destroyed more soil, created more pathogenicity (temporarily stopped some too, for sure), mutated more bacteria, and dumped more toxicity on the planet than all the cultures before us-combined. I love the United States, but I am not blind to the wrongs. I have no desire to live anywhere else, but that doesn't mean I think everything we're doing should be done or can be maintained. — Joel Salatin

The British press isn't as vicious as it used to be, and these days it's sort of cool to care again. Everyone loves an everyman anthem. — Guy Garvey

Umm, there are so many people that I've never had one person that I've particularly idolised or I thought "Wow, I want to be just like them". It used to be when I was younger, Julia Roberts, I used to just love her. There is something so appealing about her. — Emma Watson

Just love me, Harry. That's what I wanted to say. Love me like you used to. Like I was special instead of a cross you have to bear. Like the differences between us are good things instead of something awful. I want it to be the way it used to be when you looked at me as though you couldn't believe I was yours. Like I was the most wonderful creature in the world. I know I don't look the way I did then. I know I have stretch marks everywhere, and I know how much you used to love my breasts, and now they're halfway to my knees, and I hate this, and I hate that you don't love me like you used to, and I hate the fact that you're making me
beg! — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Steve [sports psychiatrist] had already taught me to try and stop worrying so much about pleasing everyone. We knew that this was one of my most draining flaws and he again used three groups to clarify my thinking. There would always be some people, Steve said, who would care about me and love me. In contrast there would also be a select group of people who would never warm to me - no matter what I did. And in the middle came the overwhelming mass who were largely indifferent to any of my failures or triumphs. I needed to understand that most people didn't really care what I did or said. All my anguish about how they might perceive me was redundant. Steve helped me realize that I spent too much time trying to please those oblivious people in the middle or, more problematically, the small group who would never change their critical opinion of me. I should concentrate on the people who really did show concern for me. — Victoria Pendleton

I love college football and I love pro football. This is how fair-weathered I am. I used to be a Giants fan, but my son who's turning 12 has really gotten into football, and he likes the Jets, so I totally jumped ships so we can root for the same team. — Chris Bauer

When I first started doing comedy years ago, I used to be the biggest Michael Richards fan. I used to love this dude. He was on a TV show called 'Fridays,' and man, he was tall and lanky - and I was tall and lanky. I love physical comedy, and he was a physical comedian, and I said, 'Man, I love this guy.' — J. B. Smoove

What have we fallen in love with that's not as effective as it used to be? What do we love doing that's not really working? What's off limits for discussion? Do we have any "old couches" that need to be thrown out? — Andy Stanley

I used to be obsessed with Pearl Jam, but I love having pink hair and kind of looking like a Barbie. — Ellie Goulding

I didn't believe you when you said there was a red statue that read "LOVE," with the LO stacked on top of the VE. LO VE It sounded like something out of one of the old fairy tales you used to tell me when I was a little girl. I thought you were kidding when you said people in the past believed in love so much that they made statues to celebrate it, so they wouldn't forget to LOVE ... well, that seemed kind of ridiculous - but when we dove down and you shined the thermal lantern, and it turned out to be true, I felt like there were so many possibilities in the world - like I'm only beginning to discover what's achievable. Maybe I will find a pure love - like what you and Mom have. — Matthew Quick

And we have the tools. We have the tools to choose. They are free, and within you now! It is the tool of conscious thought. Imagine your life and how it could be better if you used the power of conscious thought effectively? — Tony Curl

I used to be a happy person. A person with a sparkle in her eye. I was carefree, easygoing, fun, and knew joy on a regular basis. I'm smart. I have a college degree from a good school. I've built a career from my degree and I'm good at it. I had friends. Lots of good friends. I used to go out. I was passionate about life and love and myself. None of that person exists anymore. She's been stripped of all redeeming qualities. — K. Larsen

Do you remember in How the Grinch Stole Christmas! when the Grinch is alone on the mountain after plundering the Christmas of the Whos down below, and his heart swells to three times its normal size? That's the other thing that happens when you become a mom. You feel more deeply. You become capable of a raw, scary fullness of emotion that tenderizes the hardened muscle of the heart. And it endangers you. Because you feel for other people's suffering more than you used to, especially for the suffering of children, as if the love you bear for your child is so outsized that it can't be contained but splashes out into the world, your salty tears brimming the salty oceans. — Beth Ann Fennelly

A boy from Brooklyn used to cruise on summer nights.
As soon as he'd hit sixty he'd hold his hand out the window,
cupping it around the wind. He'd been assured
this is exactly how a woman's breast feels when you put
your hand around it and apply a little pressure. Now he knew,
and he loved it. Night after night, again and again, until
the weather grew cold and he had to roll the window up.
For many years afterwards he was perpetually attempting
to soar. One winter's night, holding his wife's breast
in his hand, he closed his eyes and wanted to weep.
He loved her, but it was the wind he imagined now.
As he grew older, he loved the word etcetera and refused
to abbreviate it. He loved sweet white butter. He often
pretended to be playing the organ. On one of his last mornings,
he noticed the shape of his face molded in the pillow.
He shook it out, but the next morning it reappeared. — Mary Ruefle

I'm not sure I ever want to get married. I'm neither messing around while waiting nor looking for some "real thing." What I want is much more complicated. I want somebody I can talk to about books, who would be my friend, and why couldn't we have sex as well if we wanted to? (And used contraception.) I'm not looking for romance. Lord Peter and Harriet would seem a pretty good model to me. — Jo Walton

I am your spaniel; and, Demetrius,
The more you beat me, I will fawn on you:
Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me,
Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave,
Unworthy as I am, to follow you.
What worse place can I beg in your love,
And yet a place of high respect with me,
Than to be used as you use your dog? — William Shakespeare

I wanted to be part of a high-class scene of musicians. It was half-inspired because I didn't have many friends, and I was hoping that I would meet people and fall in love and start a community around me, the way they used to do in the '60s. — Lana Del Rey

All art is propaganda, and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda. — W.E.B. Du Bois

You tell me that class distinctions are baubles used by monarchs, I defy you to show me a republic, ancient or modern, in which distinctions have not existed. You call these medals and ribbons baubles; well, it is with such baubles that men are led. I would not say this in public, but in a assembly of wise statesmen it should be said. I don't think that the French love liberty and equality: the French are not changed by ten years of revolution: they are what the Gauls were, fierce and fickle. They have one feeling: honour. We must nourish that feeling. The people clamour for distinction. See how the crowd is awed by the medals and orders worn by foreign diplomats. We must recreate these distinctions. There has been too much tearing down; we must rebuild. A government exists, yes and power, but the nation itself - what is it? Scattered grains of sand. — Napoleon Bonaparte

... So, um, you're from Rochester? Like, New York?" Jersey asked.
"Yup, we used to live out there," Rudger confirmed, nonchalant. "You ever been?"
"Naw, the closest I've ever been to there would be ... well, believe it or not, New Jersey, the place where my parents named me after. It was crowded, polluted and full of crime ... I loved it. — Rebecca McNutt

The woman is the home. That's where she used to be, and that's where she still is. You might ask me, What if a man tries to be part of the home
will the woman let him? I answer yes. Because the he becomes one of the children. — Marguerite Duras

I used to think it was corny to be in love but actually it's corny to lose an awesome woman! Real talk. — Godfrey

Yu come face to face with love, and before the sun sets you've become someone you didn't used to be...

It's the reason a wolf would chase a crow, even knowing he can't fly and she don't ever need to touch the ground. — Jonathan Hickman

Altruism, compassion, empathy, love, conscience, the sense of justice - all of these things, the things that hold society together, the things that allow our species to think so highly of itself, can now confidently be said to have a firm genetic basis. That's the good news. The bad news is that, although these things are in some ways blessings for humanity as a whole, they didn't evolve for the "good of the species" and aren't reliably employed to that end. Quite the contrary: it is now clearer than ever how (and precisely why) the moral sentiments are used with brutal flexibility, switched on and off in keeping with self-interest; and how naturally oblivious we often are to this switching. In the new view, human beings are a species splendid in their array of moral equipment, tragic in their propensity to misuse it, and pathetic in their constitutional ignorance of the misuse. The title of this book is not wholly without irony. — Robert Wright

So once the zookeeper realized it was the monkeys who stole the bananas, he knew there was only one way he'd be able to get them back."
"How?" I whispered. My throat was so sore.
"Don't talk. He had to beat them in shuffleboard, of course."
"What?"
"I said don't talk. Monkeys love shuffleboard."
He used a page from a homework assignment he'd failed and a stack of quarters to make a shuffleboard court. I watched the monkeys and the zookeepers have their showdown while I sipped the last of my applejuice.
"Need more?" Graham asked me without looking up, when my straw skidded against the dry bottom of the box.
"Uh uh."
"You're supposed to drink juice."
"I just drank some."
"More, though."
I shook my head.
"Drink more juice or the monkeys are going to kill you. The only thing they love more than shuffleboard is beating up dehydrated sick boys. — Hannah Moskowitz

I know you're not like that anymore, Kane. While I don't approve of the person you used to be, I can't change the past. Lord knows I would if I could. The only thing to do is move forward, and if you want, I would love for you to do so with me. — Amanda Stone

Freelancing is tough. It can be very difficult, in fact. It can wear people down, making them lose sight of what they used to love because they have to do everything else just to get by. — Mason Hipp

I like doing this stuff [stunts] though, it's kind of the whole reason that you want to do the movie. When you're reading it you're like, "Oh, I get to dive out a window? Cool! I get to jump off a building? Great!" So I love doing that stuff, it's like the stuff we used to do in high school to be stupid and fun. — Channing Tatum

You remember how he used to be girl on either arm? You really don't see that guy too much anymore. Why do you think that is? He's waiting for you. I know you're dealing with stuff but you cannot ask him to wait forever! Unless of course, you're okay with him pulling away."
"What if it doesn't work out? What if it ends up like you and Javier?"
"Well at least we gave it a shot. And so it didn't work out, so what? Now, we can move on give or take the occasional booty call."
"I just don't wanna lose what we have, you know?"
"Girl please! What exactly do you have, really?"
"A friendship."
"No. What you and I have is a friendship. What you and castle have is a holding pattern. How long can you circle before the fuel runs out? — Richard Castle

In their quest to be inclusive and tolerant and up-to-date, the accommodationists imitated his scandalously comprehensive love, while ignoring his scandalously comprehensive judgments. They used his friendship with prostitutes as an excuse to ignore his explicit condemnations of fornication and divorce. They turned his disdain for the religious authorities of his day and his fondness for tax collectors and Roman soldiers into a thin excuse for privileging the secular realm over the sacred. While recognizing his willingness to dine with outcasts and converse with nonbelievers, they deemphasized the crucial fact that he had done so in order to heal them and convert them - ridding the leper of his sickness, telling the Samaritans that soon they would worship in spirit and truth, urging the woman taken in adultery to go, and from now on sin no more. — Ross Douthat

While the long history of religious oppression and hypocrisy is profoundly sobering, the earnest seeker must look beyond the behavior of flawed humans in order to find the truth. Would you condemn an oak tree because its timbers had been used to build battering rams? Would you blame the air for allowing lies to be transmitted through it? Would you judge Mozart's The Magic Flute on the basis of a poorly rehearsed performance by fifth-graders? If you had never seen a real sunset over the Pacific, would you allow a tourist brochure as a substitute? Would you evaluate the power of romantic love solely in the light of an abusive marriage next door? No. A real evaluation of the truth of faith depends upon looking at the clean, pure water, not at the rusty containers. — Francis S. Collins

Let me begin with a heartfelt confession.
I admit it. I am a biblioholic, one who loves books and whose life would seem incomplete without them. I am an addict, with a compulsive need to stop by nearly any bookstore I pass in order to get my fix. Books are an essential part of my life, the place where I have spent many unforgettable moments. For me, reading is one of the most enjoyable ways to pass a rainy afternoon or a leisurely summer day. I crave the knowledge and insights that truly great books bring into my life and can spend transported hours scouring used book stores for volumes which "I simply must have". I love the smell and feel of well-loved books and the look of a bookcase full of books waiting to be taken down and read. — Terry W. Glaspey

I was always looking to be entertained. We lead such full lives and a lot of us don't lead very pleasant lives and don't like what we do ... My dad worked his whole life as a salesman and that wasn't what he really wanted to do. He looked forward to two weeks vacation every year and he used to say to me, 'Whatever you do, make sure you do something you really like so you don't just have your vacation to look forward to.' And I love movies. — Jerry Bruckheimer

I seem to be immune," I replied. "And luckily, I know what a real kiss should feel like."
I left him standing in the middle of the square. I could get used to making Mal blush. — Leigh Bardugo

The truth is that this is the only way I can live: in two directions. I need two lives. I am two beings. When I return to Hugo in the evening, to the peace and warmth of the house, I return with deep contentment, as if this was the only condition for me. I bring home to Hugo a whole woman, freed of all 'possessed' fevers, cured of the poison of restlessness and curiosity which used to threaten our marriage, cured through action. Our love lives, because I live. I sustain and feed it. I am loyal to it, in my own way, which cannot be his way. If he ever reads these lines, he must believe me. I am writing calmly, lucidly while waiting for him to come home, as one waits for the chosen lover, the eternal one. — Anais Nin

Growing up, my mom had a catering business. I used to help her pretty early on and loved doing it. My mom is an amazing cook, and she helped me cultivate a love for food. She taught me that food can be beautiful. We eat not just for survival, but we survive to eat. It's part of who I am. — Kelis

Pumping iron is not what it used to be. It doesn't have the personality it used to. When we started out, people who worked out had nothing. Now there is so much money involved; back then it was the love of the sport. We appreciated what we have. Today it's not the same. — Lou Ferrigno

I know the moon brought her to me. I know she saved me from myself. Showed me what love is supposed to be. Not the shallow, immature love I used to believe in. Love that was nothing more than hormones and ego. When she kicked the soccer ball at my head, it was like she woke up my soul. At that moment, I knew. As naturally as I knew the sound of my own heartbeat. Knew we belonged together forever. — Jillian Dodd

There are no humans left. I should not be alone. I can't help but wonder that. There were so many of us living. But time started growing young four years ago. It isn't four years anymore. It's a number I wouldn't even be able to say. It feels like four years. It's trapped in my tender memory as four years. It's been an age. Multiple ages. It's been lifetimes; every single lifetime that used to exist. I remember my mother screaming. I recall the doctors naming me as nurses wiped away her blood and covered her face with white. The end of the play. It's been so long. Why am I alone? — F.K. Preston

I used to do a little acting in school. It was my first love, and I really thought I would be doing it as a career. I really wanted to complete that part of my ambition. — Jimmy Cliff

She still loved him, she would always love him, but it was the kind of love that was muted, safely seen through the rear-view window, like a place you used to call home but no longer visited. There would always be a wound there, but the healing had begun. — Melissa De La Cruz

A little child, a limber elf,
Singing, dancing to itself,
A fairy thing with red round cheeks,
That always finds, and never seeks,
Makes such a vision to the sight
As fills a father's eyes with light ;
And pleasures flow in so thick and fast
Upon his heart, that he at last
Must needs express his love's excess
With words of unmeant bitterness.
Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together
Thoughts so all unlike each other ;
To mutter and mock a broken charm,
To dally with wrong that does no harm.
Perhaps 'tis tender too and pretty
At each wild word to feel within
A sweet recoil of love and pity.
And what, if in a world of sin
(O sorrow and shame should this be true !)
Such giddiness of heart and brain
Comes seldom save from rage and pain,
So talks as it's most used to do. — James Gillman

The problem with Christian culture is we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money. [ ... ] If something is doing something for us, offering us something, be it gifts, time, popularity, or what have you, we feel they have value, we feel they are worth something to us. I could see it so clearly, and I could see it in the pages of my life. This was the thing that had smelled so rotten all these years. I used love like money. The church used love like money. With love, we withheld affirmation from the people who did not agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones who did. — Donald Miller

There is no formula to relationships. They have to be negotiated in loving ways, with room for both parties, what they want and what they need, what they can do and what their life is like. In business, people negotiate to win. They negotiate to get what they want. Maybe you're too used to that. Love is different. Love is when you are as concerned about someone else's situation as you are about your own. — Morrie Schwartz.

I would like to disagree. I would like to argue. But that's the problem with the dead. You can't fight with them, you can't reason with them, you can't prove them wrong or yourself right, beg them to choose you, to stay with you, to love you more than death. They are gone. They have left only a big black ugly gash where their beautiful vibrant selves used to be. They no longer give a shit. — K.S.R. Burns

I love hip-hop videos. It was not meant as disrespect. I used to watch those videos and think, "Are these guys kidding? They've got to be kidding!" But they're not and that in itself is what makes them good. — Chris Cunningham

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

Caesar once, seeing some wealthy strangers at Rome, carrying up and down with them in their arms and bosoms young puppy-dogs and monkeys, embracing and making much of them, took occasion not unnaturally to ask whether the women in their country were not used to bear children; by that prince-like reprimand gravely reflecting upon persons who spend and lavish upon brute beasts that affection and kindness which nature has implanted in us to be bestowed on those of our own kind. With like reason may we blame those who misuse that love of inquiry and observation which nature has implanted in our souls, by expending it on objects unworthy of the attention either of their eyes or their ears, while they disregard such as are excellent in themselves, and would do them good. — Plutarch

I feared rejection.
I feared that love wouldn't last.
I feared that love would be used against me. To hurt me.
I feared that no one could really love me. — Willow Aster

He believes that words can be a powerful healing tool if used with loving intention, to uplift, encourage and inspire. — John McLeod

I had a lot of challenges losing the weight. I still haven't lost the weight yet and I don't plan on going back to the body I used to be at. I love my sexy curves! — Kendra Wilkinson

Chapter XV.--He Entreats God, that Whatever Useful Things He Learned as a Boy May Be Dedicated to Him. 24. Hear my prayer, O Lord; let not my soul faint under Thy discipline, nor let me faint in confessing unto Thee Thy mercies, whereby Thou hast saved me from all my most mischievous ways, that Thou mightest become sweet to me beyond all the seductions which I used to follow; and that I may love Thee entirely, and grasp Thy hand with my whole heart, and that Thou mayest deliver me from every temptation, even unto the end. For lo, O Lord, my King and my God, for Thy service be whatever useful thing I learnt as a boy--for Thy service what I speak, and write, and count. For when I learned vain things, Thou didst grant me Thy discipline; and my sin in taking delight in those vanities, Thou hast forgiven me. I learned, indeed, in them many useful words; but these may be learned in things not vain, and that is the safe way for youths to walk in. — Augustine Of Hippo

And I ask why am I black, they say I was born in sin, and shamed inequity. One of the main songs we used to sing in church makes me sick, 'love wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. — Peter Tosh

Here's some soul homework, by way of Dallas Willard: If you want to really experience the flow of love as never before, the next time you are in a competitive situation [around work or relationship or whose kids are the highest achieving or looks or whatever], pray that the others around you will be more outstanding, more praised, and more used of God than yourself. Really pull for them and rejoice in their success. If Christians were universally to do this for each other, the earth would soon be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God. — John Ortberg

So he could not be hasty or impatient. If he pushed forward impulsively, he would fail to see the signs and omens left by God along his path.
God placed them along my path. He had surprised himself with the thought. Until then, he had considered the omens to be things of this world, Like eating or sleeping, or like seeking love or finding a job. he had never thought of them in terms of a language used by God to indicate what he should do. — Paulo Coelho

Do they know when we are well and happy? do they know when we recall their memories with the fondest love? In the silent hour of evening the shade of my mother hovers around me; when seated in the midst of my children, I see them assembled near me, as they used to assemble near her; and then I raise my anxious eyes to heaven, and wish she could look down upon us, and witness how I fulfil the promise I made to her in her last moments, to be a mother to her children. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Mama had an appreciation of the language. She taught me a love of words, of how they should be used and how they can fill a creative soul with a passion and lead to a life's work. — Lewis Grizzard

The more he held me and the more he whispered his love to me in the crook of night, the more I began to believe that I was made for something more. That my body could be used as a home for a child and that my heart could make room for a cradle. — Emily T. Wierenga

If it is true, as used to be said, that oversalting means the cook is in love, at least one cook at Le Cirque must be head over heels. — Mimi Sheraton

Simon told me I should take you home and start making kits. What do you think?" Max looked down at her, love and lust glowing equally in his brilliant smile. "Max?" "What?" His tone was wary; he'd come to expect the unexpected when she used that particular tone of voice. "Will I give birth to a baby or a litter?" "Emma," he groaned. "I mean, will we be feeding them baby formula or Kitten Chow?" "Emma!" "If they get stuck in a tree, who do we call? Does the fire department do kitten rescues anymore? This is important stuff to know, Lion-O!" "God save me. — Dana Marie Bell

There was no sense to life, to the structure of things. D.H. Lawrence had known that. You needed love, but not the kind of love most people used and were used up by. Old D.H. had known something. His buddy Huxley was just an intellectual fidget, but what a marvelous one. Better than G.B. Shaw with that hard keel of a mind always scraping bottom, his labored wit finally only a task, a burden on himself, preventing him from really feeling anything, his brilliant speech finally a bore, scraping the mind and the sensibilities. It was good to read them all though. It made you realize that thoughts and words could be fascinating, if finally useless. — Charles Bukowski

I'm not at peace anymore. I just want him like I used to in the old days. I want to be eating sandwiches with him. I want to be drinking with him in a bar. I'm tired and I don't want anymore pain. I want Maurice. I want ordinary corrupt human love. Dear God, you know I want to want Your pain, but I don't want it now. Take it away for a while and give it me another time. — Graham Greene

Jamie Randall: [Last lines] I used to worry a lot about who I'd be when I grew up. You know, like how much money I'd make or, umm, like some day I'd become some big deal. Sometimes, the thing you want most doesn't happen. And sometimes, the thing you never expect does. Like giving up my job in Chicago and everything and deciding to stay and apply to med school. I don't know. You meet thousands of people and none of them really touch you. And then you meet one person and your life is changed... forever. — Margaret Watson

A formal period in life where there isn't the worry of another person's dramas and insecurities can be of great advantage, especially when used for growing into the full and wholesome beings we intended to be when choosing to come to this material manifestation.
"Even after ending a long relationship or a marriage, it seems normal to have some alone-time to reflect, meditate, explore areas of interest, find meaning in one's suffering and try to placate the void felt in the heart before attempting to enter into new relationships, otherwise the same old mistakes will surely re-emerge.
"Once we're at the stage of life where we can stand our own silence, where we've made peace with our past, where we've accepted and grown from its lessons, and we would like to share our independence without becoming dependent on someone else for love and affection, then we can choose to commit to a two bodied intimate relationship. — Nityananda Das

Ryan and I are two people who used to be in love.
What a beautiful thing to have been.
What a sad thing to be. — Taylor Jenkins Reid

I didn't know for sure whether Miss Sarah's feelings came from love or guilt. I didn't know whether mine came from love or a need to be safe. She loved me and pitied me. And I loved her and used her. It never was a simple thing. — Sue Monk Kidd

Scientists used to do an experiment whereby a dog's repeated reward for performing a task was unaccountably replaced by punishment. The dog, knowing it would be penalized for doing well or doing badly, would become melancholic and inactive. This and other unforeseeable results were funded by taxing up to sixty percent of people's earnings. People became strangely melancholic and inactive
— Steve Aylett

Healing occurs in the present, not the past. We're not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we'e not giving in the present. There's a lot of talk today about people growing up in dysfunctional homes, but who didn't grow up in a dysfunctional home? This world is a dysfunction. However, there's nothing we've been through or seen or done that cannot be used to make our lives more valuable now. We can grow from any experience, and we can transcend any experience. — Marianne Williamson

I write in order to understand the images. Being what my agent ... somewhat ruefully calls a language playwright, is problematic because in production, you have to make the language lift off the page. But a good actor can turn it into human speech. I err sometimes toward having such a compound of images that if an actor lands heavily on each one, you never pull through to a larger idea. That's a problem for the audience. But I come to playwriting from the visual world - I used to be a painter. I also really love novels and that use of language. But it's tricky to ask that of the theatre. — Ellen McLaughlin

That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is. Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love, you keep pretending - performing. You get to love your pretence. It's true, we're locked in an image, an act - and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image, they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it, they feel like you're trying to steal their most precious possession. — Jim Morrison

I put away that stuffed God I had all stitched up with my human understandings and fears. God is less formulaic and quantifiable as he once used to be, but experiencing the reality of his love is infinitely better than dragging that other one around. — Jim Palmer

[There's] a joke that I've done forever: 'Nowadays they say that the largest majority of people will be Latino and you'll tell scary stories to your grandkids: "A long time ago when I was growing up, there used to be people who were white," and the kid says, "Really?" and you say, "Yeah, like the man who cuts our grass."' I've had that line forever and I love it. — George Lopez

I think the love between a child and parent is wonderful. You know, Mei ... I haven't seen my mother for over two years. I used to live with her ... but now I live with my father. I used to be sad and wonder why it happened ... but parents have a lot of things they have to deal with too. I saw how they were suffering ... and I know they both love me a lot. You can't let loneliness harden your heart. Mei, you know ... Misuzu loves you, don't you? — Bisco Hatori

I wanted to tell everyone I was in love. I wanted to tell them how I felt. I wanted to scream if off the porch to complete strangers. It was a feeling that didn't want to be contained in the small privacy of my mind. Of course, I knew there would be no telling anyone. I'd heard the word so many times. But I'd never contemplated its meaning.
Love.
It hat explained itself to me. I was swept away by what it really meant. It was a word used to convey what had no language. It was a word used to explain a million things that couldn't be explained. It simplified what the heart could not. — Dan Skinner

I therefore used the last ten minutes of our classes to recite with them words from the Bible and verses from hymns, so that they would know them and the words would stay with them throughout their lives. The aim of my teaching was to bring to their hearts and thoughts the great truths of the Gospels so religion would have meaning in their lives and give them the strength to resist the irreligious forces that might assail them. I also tried to awaken in them a love for the Church, and a desire for that hour of spiritual peace to be found in the Sunday service. I taught them to respect traditional doctrines, but at the same time to hold fast to the saying of Paul that where the spirit of Christ is, there is freedom. — Albert Schweitzer

The steel door of the incinerator went up and the muted hum of the eternal fire became a red roaring. The heat lunged out at them like a famished beast. Then Rahel's Ammu was fed to it. Her hair, her skin, her smile. Her voice. They way she used Kipling to love her children before putting them to bed: We be of one blood, though and I. Her goodnight kiss. The way she held their faces steady with one hand (squashed-cheeked, fish-mouthed) while she parted and combed their hair with the other. The way she held knickers out for Rahel to climb into. Left leg, right leg. All this was fed to the beast, and it was satisfied.
She was their Ammu and their Baba and she had loved them Double. — Arundhati Roy

I don't want you to change, Bridgette. I'm not in love with who you could be, or who you used to be, or who the world says you should be. I'm in love with you. Right now. Just like this. — Colleen Hoover

What they used to call soul. What they used to call spirit. Indivisible, complete, that thing made of mind, distinct from body.
He thought he had one - a soul, a spirit, a nature, an essence. He thought his mind was proof of it.
If mood, facial expression, hunger pain, love of color, if everything human and happenstance came not from the soul, the core of self, but from synapses firing and electrical signals, from the stuff in the brain that could be manipulated and X-rayed, what could he say about himself with any degree of certainty? Was mind just body more refined?
He refused to believe that. — Joshua Ferris

Music is so different now," she had said to [him] once. "It used to be 'Love Me Forever' and now it's 'Help Me Make It Through the Night.'
"Aw, Ma," he had said, "don't you get it? In the old days they just hid it better. It was always 'Help Me Make It Through the Night. — Anne Tyler

And when your wife is not the same person you fell in love with eight years ago, where exactly does that leave you? Do you try to get to know who she has become, and hope for the best? Or do you keep deceiving yourself in the hope that she might wake up one morning and have gone back to the woman she used to be? — Jodi Picoult

On three great bonds of love do all cultures depend: the love between man and woman in marriage; the love between a mother and her child; and the camaraderie among men, a bond that used to be strong enough to move mountains. The first two have suffered greatly; the third has almost ceased to exist. — Anthony M. Esolen

Nothing to say. I used to be a ghostwriter for a publisher.'
'Medieval stuff?'
'Eighty-page love stories. You have this guy, untrustworthy but good in bed, and this girl, radiant but innocent. In the end they fall madly in love and it's incredibly boring. The story doesn't say when they split up.'
'Of course not,' said Mathias — Fred Vargas

My son's mother, the girl I fell in love with when I was ten, died five years ago. I expect to join her soon, at least in that. Tomorrow. Or the next day. Of that I am convinced. I thought it would be strange to live in the world without her in it. And yet. I'd gotten used to living with her memory a long time ago. Only at the very end did I see her again. I snuck into her room in the hospital and sat with her every day. — Nicole Krauss

Scusi mia bella*, but it runs in the blood of all Italians to be skillful lovers. So you have to get used to this. — Olga Goa

I miss the snow. I miss looking at it, walking in it, tasting it. I used to love those days when it was so cold everyone else would be tucked away inside trying to stay warm. I would be the only one out walking, so I could look across the fields and see miles of snow without a single footprint in it. It would be completely silent
no cars, no birds singing, no doors slamming. Just silence and snow. God, I miss snow. The stars, the moon, the wind, and blankets of pure, pristine snow. — Damien Echols

I love you so much, so incredibly much," he went on, "and I forget when you're close to me, I forget who you are. I forget that you're Jem's. I'd have to be the worst sort of person to think what I'm thinking right now. But I am thinking it. — Cassandra Clare

You aren't a bit romantic, are you?" he asked, amused.
She sat back and stared at him. She was beginning to think that Neal required a keeper. He seemed to have the craziest ideas. "Romance? Isn't that love stuff?" She asked finally.
"It's more than just love. It's color, and-and fire. You don't want things magnificent and filled with-with grandeur," he said, trying to make her understand. "You know, drama. Importance. Transcendent Passion."
"I just want to be a knight," Kel retorted, putting her used tableware on her tray. "Eat your vegetables. They're good for you. — Tamora Pierce

A blanket could be used to wrap up all the love I have to offer you, so it'll be easier for you to carry it across the desert. You'd better get walking, because me and my camel won't be stopping until we have to pee. — Jarod Kintz

Naturally I feel no shame in writing these things because of the time which separates the moment when they are written
when only I can see them
from the moment when they will be read by other people, a moment which I feel will never come. By then I could have had an accident or died; a war or a revolution could have broken out. This delay makes it possible for me to write today, in the same way I used to lie in the scorching sun for a whole day at sixteen, or make love wihout contraceptives at twenty: without thinking about the consequences — Annie Ernaux

Never in the known history of man has a people or nation stockpiled weapons and in the end not used them. But if we use the weapons we have stockpiled it will be the end of nations and peoples if not the end of the whole race. Never has the human family so urgently needed a transformation of consciousness. Those who devote themselves to contemplative meditation are performing a most basic and loving service. It is a very real response to the call to love and to act. — M. Basil Pennington

Dear God, I surrender this situation to you. May it be used for your purposes. I ask only that my heart be open to give love and to receive love. May all the results unfold according to your will. Amen. Whatever you do, do it for God. — Marianne Williamson

Rest," Logan said. "Both of you." His caressing gaze moved over his wife and infant daughter.
"I'll watch over you."
"Love me?" Madeline asked with a faint smile, and yawned again.
"It used to be love." He brushed his lips over her closed eyelids. "Now there's no word for it."
"You once told me that you thought love was a weakness."
"I was wrong," he whispered, kissing the corners of her mouth. "I've discovered it's my only
strength."
Madeline fell asleep with a smile still on her lips, her hand curled around his. — Lisa Kleypas

JAMIE'S SONG 'Bright Blue Dream':

I watch the world go round and round.
And see the sun go up and down.
I think I've heard most every sound
Except your voice.

I feel the river by my feet.
And let the tears dry indiscrete.
Seems the horizon's incomplete
Without your face.

The world is a colder place,
Shadows everywhere you used to be.
Darker than the darkest nights I've seen.

And I try go back to that
Bright blue dream.
When there was nothing, there was nothing, but you and me.
Clear blue sky.
Yes there was something, there was something, I could not see. — Neha Yazmin