What If We Love Each Other Quotes & Sayings

Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists. When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence. — Edmond De Goncourt

Conversations are efforts toward good relations. They are an elementary form of reciprocity. They are the exercise of our love for each other. They are the enemies of our loneliness, our doubt, our anxiety, our tendencies to abdicate. To continue to be in good conversation over our enormous and terrifying problems is to be calling out to each other in the night. If we attend with imagination and devotion to our conversations, we will find what we need; and someone among us will act - it does not matter whom - and we will survive. — Barry Lopez

The more he loved and was loved, the better his life got. At once it seemed to Jack like a magical solution to everything. If only everyone loved everyone else! Then there would be no trouble in the world. It seemed so easy. If we all just reached our hands out to each other, what peaks of human joy could we not achieve! — Don Carpenter

If I met you last night, and brought you back to my place, or followed you to yours, and we had sex, that's what we asked for from each other. It's what I got, and what you got. I don't know you. You don't know me. Thanks for playing, and we're done. If by some fluke anything was said at some point during this entire exchange that made me curious enough to see you again, I would.
Has that happened before? A couple of times. Did it last? Clearly, no. — Tammara Webber

Strictly speaking, one cannot legislate love, but what one can do is legislate fairness and justice. If legislation does not prohibit our living side by side, sooner or later your child will fall on the pavement and I'll be the one to pick her up. Or one of my children will not be able to get into the house and you'll have to say, "Stop here until your mom comes here." Legislation affords us the chance to see if we might love each other. — Maya Angelou

If we could only make our hands move as actively as our tongues, what wonders we could accomplish! Almost everyone loves to hear his own voice. It is so easy, too! Yet if we could say less and do more for each other's good, not alone would every home be happier, but communities would be enriched thereby. Instead of criticism by speech, to show someone a better way to do a thing would be of much greater value. — John Wanamaker

Like I said, some people think it's weird that my best friend is a girl. Sometimes I think it's weird, too. Mostly people assume that we're boyfriend and girlfriend, which I guess we could be. But that just seems too teen-movie, if you know what I mean. A boy and girl are best friends, neither of them dates anyone else, and then one night they look at each other and - bang - they realize they've been in love with each other the whole time. Everyone's happy and they go to the big dance together. — Michael Thomas Ford

I have calculated the total number of hours
we spend sleeping beside each other in a week
and I wanted to tell you it could be considered
a full-time job. We could be eligible for healthcare
benefits, could probably even pay for a mortgage
by now. I remind myself of this, in daylight, when
I miss you and cannot reach across the bed
for the comforting filling and refilling
of your chest. Such a strange affair
we are having on each other; these hours
that I have not lost but do not remember.
This cannot be the best of love: to drool
on someone's collarbone or inhale an elbow to
the jaw or be woken by the most ungraceful sounds
of the body. But what is it if not the softening
of grips? A letting go of. Your heart
finally slowly that stubborn, lonely march. — Sierra DeMulder

Hence it is truly said of heaven 'in heaven there is no ownership. If any there took upon him to call anything his own, he would straightway be thrust out into hell and become an evil spirit.'4 But it is also said 'To him that overcometh I will give a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it.'5 What can be more a man's own than this new name which even in eternity remains a secret between God and him? And what shall we take this secrecy to mean? Surely, that each of the redeemed shall forever know and praise some one aspect of the Divine beauty better than any other creature can. Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently? — C.S. Lewis

And to remember both our triumphs and our missteps, our promises made and broken, the times we opened ourselves up to great adventures or closed ourselves down for fear of getting hurt, because that's what new year's all about, getting another chance, a chance to forgive. to do better, to do more, to give more, to love more, and to stop worrying about what if and start embracing what will be. so when that ball drops at midnight, and it will drop, let's remember to be nice to each other, kind to each other, and not just tonight but all year long. — Claire Morgan

Here was a boy who liked flaws, who saw them not as failings but as strengths. Who knew such a person could exist, or what would have happened if we'd found each other under different circumstances? Maybe in a perfect world. But not in this one. — Sarah Dessen

If we are open and we prepare for promoting dialogue and love, and a better understanding of each other, and tolerance and so forth, that's what the world will become, a more tolerant, loving place. — Russell Simmons

I say, we live on, though I am wrong, this is what I say.
In the past, present, future, we live on as if in one time.
You can never stop the past from happening,
and it has happened , and will continue to happen.
This is the truth, I think I know, along with

the two other things I do know.
I exist.
I want to kiss you.

And also this: each day, as we go,
we will always be as young as we can be. — Derek Keck

Do you love him?"
"I wish people would stop asking me that," Celia muttered under her breath.
"What people?"
"Gran." She swallowed. "Mr. Pinter."
"Mr. Pinter?" Minerva echoed with decided interest.
"It's not what you think," Celia protested. "I hired him to find out the truth about my suitors, so he wanted to know if I was in love with any of them."
Minerva arched one eyebrow. "And why should he care?"
"That's what I said. And ever since, he's been baiting me in front of them and telling me awful things about them to blacken them in my mind."
"Even Lyons?" Minerva said.
"Well, no. I mean, I'm sure you've heard about the madness in the duke's family, but beyond that, Jackson hasn't found a single thing-"
"Jackson?"
Celia colored. "Mr. Pinter." When Minerva kept staring, she added sullenly, "We've been in each other's pockets because of the investigation. That's all. — Sabrina Jeffries

At first we had so much to catch up on we were talking a hundred words a second, barely even listening to the ends of one another's sentences before moving onto the next. And there was laughing. Lots of laughing. Then the laughing stopped and there was this silence. What the hell was it?
It was like the world stopped turning in that instant. Like everyone around us had disappeared. Like everything at home was forgotten about. It was as if those few minutes on this world were created just for us and all we could do was look at each other. It was like he was seeing my face for the first time. He looked confused but kind of amused. Exactly how I felt. Because I was sitting on the grass with my best friend Alex, and that was my best friend Alex's face and nose and eyes and lips, but they seemed different. So I kissed him. I seized the moment and I kissed him, — Cecelia Ahern

Maybe I'll get you a painting for Christmas," I said.
"We don't buy Christmas presents for each other," Edward said.
We were both staring at the fireplace as if visualizing that make-believe fire. "Maybe I'll start. One of those big-eyed children or a clown on velvet."
"I won't hang it if I don't like it."
I glanced at him. "Unless it's from Donna."
He was very still suddenly. "Yes."
"Maybe I'll tell her how much you love those pictures of dogs playing poker and she can buy you some prints."
"She wouldn't believe it," he said.
"No, but I bet I could come up with something that she would believe that you'd hate just as much."
He stared at me. "You wouldn't."
"I might."
"This sounds like the opening to blackmail. What do you want? — Laurell K. Hamilton

I became aware that our love was doomed; love had turned into a love affair with a beginning and an end. I could name the very moment when it had begun, and one day I knew I should be able to name the final hour. When she left the house I couldn't settle to work. I would reconstruct what we had said to each other; I would fan myself into anger or remorse. And all the time I knew I was forcing the pace. I was pushing, pushing the only thing I loved out of my life. As long as I could make believe that love lasted I was happy; I think I was even good to live with, and so love did last. But if love had to die, I wanted it to die quickly. It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death; I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck. — Graham Greene

We cannot know for certain how long we have here. We cannot foresee the trials or misfortunes that will test us along the way. We cannot know God's plan for us.
What we can do is to live out our lives as best we can with purpose, and love, and joy. We can use each day to show those who are closest to us how much we care about them, and treat others with the kindness and respect that we wish for ourselves. We can learn from our mistakes and grow from our failures. And we can strive at all costs to make a better world, so that someday, if we are blessed with the chance to look back on our time here, we can know that we spent it well; that we made a difference; that our fleeting presence had a lasting impact on the lives of other human beings. — Barack Obama

Some of you young folks been saying to me, 'Hey Pops, what you mean what a wonderful world? How about all them wars all over the place? You call them wonderful? And how about hunger and pollution? They ain't so wonderful either.' But how about listening to old Pops for a minute. It seems to me it ain't the world that's so bad, but what we're doing to it, and all I'm saying is see what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love, baby, love. That's the secret. Yeah. If lots more of us loved each other, we'd solve lots more problems. And man, this world would be a gasser. — Louis Armstrong

Hope is the greatest madness. What can we expect of a world that we enter with the assurance of seeing our fathers and mothers die? A world where, if two beings love each other and give their lives to each other, both can be sure that one will watch the other perish? — Alfred De Vigny

There is much to love, and that love is what we are left with. When the bombs stop dropping, and the camps fall back to the earth and decay, and we are done killing each other, that is what we must hold. We can never let the world take our memories of love away, and if there are no memories, we must invent love all over again. — Louise Murphy

How could you love us being together?" he asked me "We are nothing alike and we are not meant for each other and we drive each other crazy, you love that? How can you love that?" So I told him "I know that we're not meant for each other, that we drive each other crazy, and that we are so different. But that's us. That's what we have; a wild nonsense. We are not good together, but together we are bad for each other. I love us together this way just like this. Because even if it's no good, it's what we have! It's us. — C. JoyBell C.

Last spring, David had offered this crazy solution to our woes, only half in jest: ... "What if we admitted that we make each other nuts, we fight constantly and hardly ever have sex, but we can't live without each other, so we deal with it? And then we could spend our lives together- in misery, but happy to not be apart." Let it be a testimony to how desperately I love this guy that I have spent the last ten months giving that offer serious consideration. The other alternative in the backs of our minds, of course, was that one of us might change. He might become more open and affectionate, not withholding himself from anyone who loves him on the fear that she will eat his soul. Or I might learn how to ... stop trying to eat his soul. — Elizabeth Gilbert

You think I don't know, that I don't understand what that cost you. But you're wrong." She couldn't keep her voice steady, gave up trying. "You're wrong, Roarke. I do know. There's no one else in the world who would want, who would need to kill for me. No one else in the world who would step back from it because I asked it. Because I needed it."
She turned, and the first tear spilled over. "No one but you."
"Don't. You'll do me in if you cry."
"I never in my life expected anyone would love me, all of me. How would I deserve that? What would I do with it? But you do. Everything we've managed to have together, to be to each other, this is more. I'll never be able to find the words to tell you what you just gave me."
"You undo me, Eve. Who else would make me feel like a hero for doing nothing."
"You did everything. Everything. Are everything. — J.D. Robb

Good-bye,' I said to them, but they didn't seem to hear me, and why would they have wanted to? Why would they have wanted to do with the world outside of each other? Outside each other, they were mean little human beings like the rest of us, the kind of people you both loathed and pitied. Separately, they were characters, and not in a good way. But together they were something to wonder at and maybe even envy. I had this unoriginal thought as I walked out the door and toward my van: love changes us, makes us into people whom others then want to love. That's why, to those of us without it, love is the voice asking, What else? What else? And to those of us who have had love and lost it or thrown it away, then love is the voice that leads us back to love, to see if it might still be ours or if we've lost it, love is also the thing that makes us speak in aphorisms about love, which is why we try to get love back, so we can stop speaking that way. Aphoristically, that is. — Brock Clarke

Here is what unsayable about us: Jonathan and I are members of a team so old nobody else could join even if we wanted them to. What binds us is stronger than sex. It is stronger than love. We're related. Each of us is the other born into a different flesh. — Michael Cunningham

I say, "In the contract we said we wouldn't break each other's hearts. What if we do it again?" Fiercely he says, "What if we do? If we're so guarded, it's not going to be anything. Let's do it fucking for real, Lara Jean. Let's go all in. No more contract. No more safety net. You can break my heart. Do whatever you want with it. — Jenny Han

That's what I love about running - I feel like we all celebrate each other. Even if you're racing somebody at the finish, it's like you're in it together. — Summer Sanders

Perhaps we were, all of us -pimps, whores, racketeers, church members, and children -bound together by the nature of our oppression, the specific and peculiar complex of risks we had to run; if so, within these limits we sometimes achieved with each other a freedom that was close to love. I remember, anyway, church suppers and outing, and later, after I left the church, rent and waistline parties where rage and sorrow sat in the darkness and did not stir, and we ate and drank and talked and laughed and danced and forgot all about "the man." We had the liquor, we had the chicken, the music, and each other, and had no need to pretend to be what we were not, This is the freedom that one hears in some gospel songs, for example, and in jazz. — James Baldwin

It matters to ourselves, of course, but it matters terribly to other people. Moral failure or spiritual failure or whatever you call it, makes such a vicious circle ... It seems as if when we love people and they fall short, we retaliate by falling shorter ourselves. Children are like that. Adults have a fearful responsibility. When they fail to live up to what children expect of them, the children give up themselves. So each generation keeps failing the next. — Dorothy Whipple

Ginny, listen ... I can't be involved with you anymore. We've got to stop seeing each other. We can't be together."
"It's for some stupid noble reason isn't it?"
"It's been like ... like something out of someone else's life these last few weeks with you. But I can't ... we can't ... I've got to do things alone now. Voldemort uses people his enemies are close to. He's already used you as bait once, and that was just because you were my best friend's sister. Think how much danger you'll be in if we keep this up. He'll know, he'll find out. He'll try and get me through you."
"What if I don't care?"
"I care. How do you think I'd feel if this was your funeral ... and it was my fault ... — J.K. Rowling

Alexis grabbed his arm. "Tom Jones? Wow, I totally love Tom Jones. He's like quintessential Vegas - over the top and indecent fun. Let me just go grab a pair of underwear to throw at him and we'll be all set."
Over his undead body. If anyone was getting her underwear tossed in his face, it was going to be him.
"I don't think so, Ball Buster. You're not giving your panties to an old man."
"Oh, and you're so young, Garlic?"
"Garlic?" What the hell was that?
"Yep. Now we have pet names for each other, isn't that adorable? You're Garlic and I'm Ball Buster. Now everyone will believe we're a real couple. — Erin McCarthy

Our own happiness, our own peace, can never be complete until we find some way of sharing it with people who the way things are now have no happiness and know no peace. Jesus calls us to show this truth forth, live this truth forth. Be the light of the world, he says. Where there are dark places, be the light especially there. Be the salt of the earth. Bring out the true flavor of what it is to be alive truly. Be truly alive. Be life-givers to others. That is what Jesus tells the disciples to be. That is what Jesus tells his Church, tells us, to be and do. Love each other. Heal the sick, he says. Raise the dead. Cleanse lepers. Cast out demons. That is what loving each other means. If the Church is doing things like that, then it is being what Jesus told it to be. If it is not doing things like that - no matter how many other good and useful things it may be doing instead - then it is not being what Jesus told it to be. It is as simple as that. — Frederick Buechner

I love you , Valentine' is actually a popular phrase used in greeting cards."
If you were sending me one, what would it say?" he asks.
I love you, too, Roman."
And there it is, words that I dread to say and do mean, because with them comes the responsibility of owning it, moving forward together and deciding for real who we are to each other. Now we're not just lovers discovering what we like and sharing what we know. In this mutual declaration, we're accountable to each other. We're in love, and now, our relationship has to build slowly and beautifully in order to hold all the joy and misery that lies ahead. — Adriana Trigiani

If we are to go by what the movies and novels tell us, falling in love just happens. If it is a Hindi movie, you hear a melodious track in the background, the lyrics usually waxing eloquent about the heroine's beauty, comparing various parts of her anatomy to the moon, stars, the sun - even Fevicol. This is accompanied by the hero gazing at her with the expression of a glutton discovering a six-course banquet consisting of various gastronomical delights. In real life though, falling in love often happens over a period of time. You see someone gorgeous and get attracted strongly. If you strike up a conversation, find each other likable - or intriguing, as the case may be - then you exchange phone numbers or email ids. After a couple of dates, discovering many things and maybe a kiss or something more, depending on how much in resonance your moral compasses are, the magic happens, and wham, you are in love. — Preeti Shenoy

I couldn't sleep last night because I know that it's over between us. I'm not bitter any more, because I know that what we had was real. And if in some distant place in the future we see each other in our new lives, I'll smile at you with joy and remember how we spent the summer beneath the trees, learning from each other and growing in love. The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds, and that's what you've given me
- Noah The Notebook — Nicholas Sparks

The spelling and handwriting were those of a man imperfectly educated, but still the language itself was forcible. In the expressions of endearment there was a kind of rough, wild love; but here and there were dark unintelligible hints at some secret not of love,
some secret that seemed of crime. "We ought to love each other," was one of the sentences I remember, "for how everyone else would execrate us if all was known." Again: "Don't let anyone be in the same room with you at night,
you talk in your sleep." And again: "What's done can't be undone; and I tell you there's nothing against us unless the dead could come to life." Here there was underlined in a better handwriting (a female's), "They do! — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

I suspect that the most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention And especially if it's given from the heart. When people are talking, there's no need to do anything but receive them. Just take them in. Listen to what they're saying. Care about it. Most times caring about it is even more important than understanding it. Most of us don't value ourselves or our love enough to know this. — Rachel Naomi Remen

Oh, I thought that I was giving him so much!
And he to me - and the giving and the taking
Seemed so right: not in terms of calculation
Of what was good for the persons we had been
But for the new person, us. If I could feel
As I did then, even now it would seem right.
And then I found we were only strangers
And that there had been neither giving nor taking
But that we had merely made use of each other
Each for his purpose. That's horrible. Can we only love
Something created by our own imagination?
Are we all in fact unloving and unlovable?
The one is alone, and if one is alone
Then lover and beloved are equally unreal
And the dreamer is no more real than his dreams. — T. S. Eliot

We see them as they cannot, will not, see each other
we see his heart in the way he looks at her; we see her soul calling out for his every touch. It would be so easy if they could only see inside each other as we can.
And yet, there is beauty in the way they find each other: slowly, in a fragile dance of sidelong glances and accidental touches. To see them come together, souls binding without knowing each other as we do, without being certain of what the other's heart holds, is to learn something new ...
Faith. — Amie Kaufman

Through love arises a sense of respect. And respect gives way to fear. But this fear is different from the fear we normally experience. Fear arising out of love is fear in its most divine form. If love brings people together, its fear that keeps them from falling apart. It is what makes them responsible to each other. In this sense love and fear are but the same thing. — Siddhartha Choudhary

If you're angry at a loved one, hug that person. And mean it. You may not want to hug - which is all the more reason to do so. It's hard to stay angry when someone shows they love you, and that's precisely what happens when we hug each other. — Walter Inglis Anderson

Ultimate reality is a community of persons who know and love one another. That is what the universe, God, history, and life is all about. If you favor money, power, and accomplishment over human relationships, you will dash yourself on the rocks of reality [ ... ]
[it is] impossible [ ... ] to stay fully human if you refuse the cost of forgiveness, the substitutional exchange of love, and the confinements of community.
[ ... ] We believe the world was made by a God who is a community of persons who have loved each other for all eternity. You were made for mutually self-giving, other directed love. Self-centeredness destroys the fabric of what God has made. — Timothy Keller

I said it's a cold universe and I don't mean that metaphorically. If you go out into space, it's cold. It's really cold and we don't know what's up there. We happen to be in this little pocket where there's a sun. What have we got except love and each other to guard against all that isolation and loneliness? — David Chase

if i love You
(thickness means
worlds inhabited by roamingly
stern bright faeries

if you love
me) distance is mind carefully
luminous with innumerable gnomes
Of complete dream

if we love each (shyly)
other, what clouds do or Silently
Flowers resembles beauty
less than our breathing — E. E. Cummings

( ... )"He said we all have this different idea of what love is and that's what makes our circle. The more ideas and misconceptions you throw in, the larger the diameter and the harder it is to connect with someone. We," he said, squeezing Hunter's hand and signaling Margie and everyone around them, "all sit around the edge looking at everyone else around the circle. Sometimes we just settle for the person next to us because it's easy or convenient and we skip our way around its circumference, never really knowing what love is all about."
He took a sip of his Coke and kept his eyes on Margie. "But other times, you see that person across from you, staring back at you, and you fight like hell trying to get across while he does the same. If you're lucky, there's a rope you can toss over and help draw each other in, never looking away, never worrying about those still on the circumference; just you and him, pulling each other in, deeper and deeper." — Brandon Shire

I'm the fortieth-ugliest man in this bar. But so what! So what! What if someday she lets me kiss each one of her freckles again? She has like a million. But every one of them means something to me. Isn't this how people used to fall in love? I know we're living in Rubenstein's America, like you keep saying. But doesn't that just make us even more responsible for each other's fates? I mean, what if Eunice and I just said no to all this. To this bar. To this FACing. The two of us. What if we just went home and read books to each other? — Gary Shteyngart

GLINDA: Well,I'm a public figure now! People expect me to
ELPHABA: Lie?
GLINDA: (fiercely) Be encouraging! And what exactly have you been doing? Besides riding on around on that filthy thing!
ELPHABA: Well, we can't all come and go by bubble. Whose invention was that, the Wizard's? Of course, even if it wasn't, I'm sure he'd still take credit for it.
GLINDA: Yes, well, a lot of us are taking things that don't belong to us, aren't we?
Uh oh! The two stare daggers at each other, then ...
ELPHABA: Now, wait just a clock-tick. I know it's difficult for that blissful blonde brain of yours to comprehend that someone like him could actually choose someone like me!But it's happened. It's real. And you can wave that ridiculous wand all you want, you can't change it! He never belonged to you
he doesn't love you, he never did! He loves me! — Stephen Schwartz

What is it you do, then? I'll tell you: You leave out whatever doesn't suit you. As the author himself has done before you. Just as you leave things out of your dreams and fantasies. By leaving things out, we bring beauty and excitement into the world. We evidently handle our reality by effecting some sort of compromise with it, an in-between state where the emotions prevent each other from reaching their fullest intensity, graying the colors somewhat. Children who haven't yet reached that point of control are both happier and unhappier than adults who have. And yes, stupid people also leave things out, which is why ignorance is bliss. So I propose, to begin with, that we try to love each other as if we were characters in a novel who have met in the pages of a book. Let's in any case leave off all the fatty tissue that plumps up reality. — Robert Musil

How different the world would be if each parent could say to the child: "Who you are is terrific, all you are meant to be. And who you are, as you are, is loved by all of us. You have a source within, which is the soul, and it will express itself to you through what we call desire. Always respect the well-being of the other, but live your own journey, serve that desire, risk being that which wishes to enter the world through you, and you will always have our love, even if your path takes you away from us." Such persons would then have a powerful tool to enable them to change their lives when it was not working out for them. Such persons would be able to make difficult decisions, mindful always of the impact on others, but also determined to live the life intended by the gods who brought us here. — James Hollis

Why don't we just say it already?" He smirked. "I mean come on now."
I eyed him carefully not knowing where to step. "What is it you think we want to say?"
"That we love each other. I kick myself every time I stopped myself from saying it. And I know you love me and that's all that matters," he said, pulling me close instead of away this time. We stared at the water in a shared silence.
My mind wished I could say the same thing, but knowing if I wanted to was the problem. Did I even know how? — Holly Hood

My mother looked at my image as if she were looking at a wicked little girl come to scornfully show herself to her poor mother. There was love in her look, but with such jealousy mixed in that the feelings became quickly slurred. It was what my mother gave me, so I took it and I gave it back; I reveled in her jealousy as she reveled in my vanity. Reveling and rageful, we went between sleep and dreams right there in the dining room. Silent and still, we attacked each other like animals. — Mary Gaitskill

Then, without any warning, we both straightened up, turned towards each other, and began to kiss. After that, it is difficult for me to speak of what happened. Such things have little to do with words, so little, in fact, that it seems almost pointless to try to express them. If anything, I would say that we were falling into each other, that we were falling so fast and so far that nothing could catch us. — Paul Auster

TODAY I THINK MY RELATIONSHIP WITH HELL IS OVER. It was hell, the ancient hell. Hell: I believed that if I loved V enough, we would love each other.
All I know is that I've been returned to earth violently; I've a duty to myself to survive and to see what is. I have to deal with the truth, with nothing else.
Did V's charity to me almost cause my death?
I, starving, fed on the dream that V loved me and I lived a lie. So forgive me, You who knows that only truth matters.
Yes - this dawn is at best difficult.
The blood he let out of my skin, now dried and stiff, hurts me and there's nothing else in my life but memories of him. Mental war is constant.
Nonetheless, this is the eve before the morning.
May I accept the influxes of vigor and whatever real tenderness floats by in these barren waters. And when dawn comes, armed with my patience which burns, I shall see the cities of humans which are splendid.
The imagination is nothing unless it is made actual. — Kathy Acker

Wouldn't it be good if we could let teachers do what they do best - teach. Not judge each child on a series of standardized exams. Let schools embrace, not exclude, those like me with a different way of thinking.
Stop praising literacy with one hand and closing libraries with the other. Let librarians be free to do what they do best: encourage a lifelong love of reading in every child, even the ones without a hope of ever getting an A star. — Sally Gardner

You've always asked me to wait, as if we had time in abundance. But time is too precious, Perry. We've wasted years, when we could have been with each other. Don't you understand how much even one day of loving each other is worth? Some people are separated by distances they can never cross. All they can do is dream about each other for a lifetime, never having what they want most. How foolish, how wasteful to have love within your reach and not take it! She clamped her teeth on her trembling bottom lip to steady herself — Lisa Kleypas

If you take away money, if you take away the houses and things, who are we really? What is love really about? What is it to love each other? Why do we stay together, and why do all the kids split? All these questions I have really deep inside of me. — Sonia Braga

Because I think that's what love is- everything but children's love, anyway - loving the wounds we give each other, and that we can't help giving each other; you can't stay alive if you don't hurt people. — J.R. Salamanca

But what I love is the end of your poem, when the urn talks to us. It says this: 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--- that is all / ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' I keep trying to figure out exactly what you mean, but that sentence is like a circle. If beauty is truth, and if truth is beauty, they are defined by each other, so how do we know the meaning of either? I think that we make our own meanings, by putting ourselves into them. — Ava Dellaira

I am not bitter because of what has happened. On the contrary. I am secure in knowing that what we had was real, and I am happy we were able to come together for even a short period of time. And if, in some distant place in the future, we see each other in our new lives, I will smile at you with joy, and remember how we spent a summer beneath the trees, learning from each other and growing in love. And maybe, for a brief moment, you'll feel it, too, and you'll smile back, and savor the memories we will always share together.
I love you, Allie.
Noah — Nicholas Sparks

So, what now? We're friends?
Yeah. If friends could be in love, but not together. In sync, but out of touch. Willing to die for each other, but unable to trust. — Rachel Vincent

I think love is the most misunderstood emotion in the universe. I don't think half the people know what real love is. And I don't think half the people on this planet have ever experienced it. If people experienced for one moment what real love is, we could never live the way we live with each other. We couldn't do to each other what we're doing. We couldn't ignore what we're ignoring. We couldn't allow it to be the way it is. — Neale Donald Walsch

I don't know why people do the things they do to each other. We're all here to live out lives, to do our work, to raise our families, to love who we love. We're all here for the same things, but some, they can't let that be. They can't be happy or content with that. I don't know what that is. She handed the photos back to Peabody. Do you? At a loss, Eve shifted. No. If you don't, I don't suppose anybody really does. — J.D. Robb

I want him back, Henry. I want us to be a family."
"We are a family." He kissed my forehead, my cheek, and finally brushed his lips against mine. "We cannot pretend it has been easy, but we love each other unconditionally, and that is what matters. We will get him back. I swear it."
My chin trembled. "How?"
"I do not know yet, but I will find a way. We will find a way together."
I kissed him back, not caring if he could taste my tears. — Aimee Carter

Francisco, I did love you-' she said, and caught her breath, shocked, realizing that she had not intended to say it and, simultaneously, that this was not the tense she had wanted to use.
'But you do,' he said calmly, smiling. 'You still love me-even if there's one expression of it that you'll always feel and want, but will not give to me any longer. I'm still what I was, and you'll always see it, and you'll always grant me the same response, even if there's a greater one that you grant to another man. No matter what you feel for him, it will not change what you feel for me and it won't be treason to either, because comes from the same root, it's the same payment in answer to the same values. No matter what happens in the future, we'll always be what we were to each other, you and I, because you'll always love me. — Ayn Rand

We can make each other happy, Farah," Cooper said, lying between my legs and swinging his feet like a kid. His expression was tender as he teased my nipples. "I know you're mine. If you let me start over, we can be so fucking happy that all the shit that came before will be no more than a bad dream."
"I'm afraid to love you too much."
"It's normal to be scared when you grew up in a shitty way. I bet you spent most of your life worrying that anything nice might get stolen away. With me, with what we have, it's probably scary. For me though, losing you is the only thing that scares the shit out of me. I need to make you happy so you'll stay and I can be happy. — Bijou Hunter

In order to change, however, you have to be willing to acknowledge the need for change - in other words, you have to come to terms with the fact that everything in your life isn't perfect. There is this concept - among not just Scientologists, but everyone - that we are all supposed to have it together. Whether it's our work, love lives, family relationships, or even feelings about ourselves, we need to present this idealized image to others. We are so conditioned when asked "How are you?" to say "Good" or "Great." But why not "I don't know. I hate everyone today." Why are we so scared to be judged imperfect or to talk about how we really feel? To be authentic? If we can just tell each other how and what we are really doing, step outside of what we believe others think we should be, the result can be therapeutic. — Leah Remini

It made me smile, the way they got along, the easy and affectionate way they talked to each other as if love between a father and a son was simple and uncomplicated. My mom and I, sometimes what we had was easy and uncomplicated. Sometimes. But me and my dad, we didn't have that. I wondered what that would be like, to walk into a room and kiss my father. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

You are the minute hand and I am the hour hand. The female said and continued, "You move that's why I move." "And what about the second hand?" The man queried. "That's our love for each other. We move because, and only if, it moves. — Novoneel Chakraborty

To live in the midst of danger is to know how good life is," his father replied.
"But if we are lost in the danger?" Kino asked anxiously.
"To live in the presence of death makes us brave and strong," Kino's father replied. "That is why our people never fear death. We see it too often and we do not fear it. To die a little later or a little sooner does not matter. But to live bravely, to lobe life, to see how beautiful the trees are and the mountains, yes, even the sea, to enjoy work because it produces food for life - in these things we Japanese are a fortunate people. We love life because we live in danger. We do not fear death because we understand that life and death are necessary to each other."
"What is death?" Kino asked.
"Death is the great gateway," Kino's father said. — Pearl S. Buck

If you were all alone in the universe with no one to talk to, no one with which to share the beauty of the stars, to laugh with, to touch, what would be your purpose in life? It is other life; it is love, which gives your life meaning. This is harmony. We must discover the joy of each other, the joy of challenge, the joy of growth. — Mitsugi Saotome

If all the world were green, there would be no such thing as the color green. Similarly, men cannot know what it is to be together without otherwise knowing what it is to be apart. If all the world were love, then, how could love exist? This is why we turn away from each other on moments of great happiness and closeness. How can we know happiness and closeness without contrasting them, like lights? — Jack Kerouac

So if we're all quarks and electrons ... " he begins.
What?"
We could make love and it would be nothing more than quarks and electrons rubbing together."
Better than that," I say. "Nothing really 'rubs together' in the microscopic world. Matter never really touches other matter, so we could make love without any of our atoms touching at all. Remember that electrons sit on the outside of atoms, repelling other electrons. So we could make love and actually repel each other at the same time. — Scarlett Thomas

But the things is, you see, that two people can never actually become one no matter how close they are. And it would not be desirable even if it were possible. What would happen when one of them died? It would leave the other as a half a person, and that would be a dreadful thing. We must each be a whole person and therefore we each need some privacy to be alone with ourselves and our own feelings. — Mary Balogh

-I haven't decided if you're the most wonderful man to walk the earth or the craziest.
-A fine line between the two. What I am is crazy about you. And if I have to fire you to love you, I'll do it. But I don't want that. I want us to love each other and to work side by side. I think we make a pretty good team.
-So do I
~Zach & Regan — Bernadette Marie

I asked Phil Prentiss what he would do if they never got a baby and he said they'd die with a lot of excess love in their hearts ... ." "And let's not," Jack said. "Let's spend every drop. On the kids, on our families, on your patients, on the town. On people we don't know yet and the ones who have been our good friends forever. On each other. Let's spend our last drop as we're taking our last breaths. — Robyn Carr

I always wanted to know what it is right. Maybe we know each other from time immemorial, if you know that in you is the eternal energy of goodness, which is most important for you. — Gregor Golob

LEARNING LOVE If our parents didn't love and understand each other, how are we to know what love looks like? There aren't courses or classes in love. If the grown-ups know how to take care of each other, then the children who grow up in this environment will naturally know how to love, understand, and bring happiness to others. The most precious inheritance that parents can give their children is their own happiness. Our parents may be able to leave us money, houses, and land, but they may not be happy people. If we have happy parents, we have received the richest inheritance of all. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Love Beyond God

What if every time you woke
Your sigh was felt
By every being on Earth?

What if every time you spoke
Your words were heard
By every ear on Earth?

What if when you told a joke
You tickled the senses
Of every smile on Earth?

What if with each tender stroke
You shared your touch
With every hand on Earth?

What if when your heart broke
You tasted the tears
Running down every cheek on Earth?

No bond or brand or "guilted" yoke,
Surely this is love that reaches beyond,
That holds one to another
And every other to one.
No matter the color
Or where we're from.
This is now.
This is we.
This is Love.
This is God.
And this is love beyond God. — Adam Lawrence Dyer

If one believed in angels one would feel that they must love us best when we are asleep and cannot hurt each other; and what a mercy it is that once in every twenty-four hours we are too utterly weary to go on being unkind. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

My wife and I just don't have the same feelings for each other we used to have. I guess I just don't love her anymore and she doesn't love me. What can i do?"
"The feeling isn't there anymore?" I asked.
"That's right," he reaffirmed. "And we have three children we're really concerned about. What do you suggest?"
"love her," I replied.
"I told you, the feeling just isn't there anymore."
"Love her."
"You don't understand. the feeling of love just isn't there."
"Then love her. If the feeling isn't there, that's a good reason to love her."
"But how do you love when you don't love?"
"My friend , love is a verb. Love - the feeling - is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Serve her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that? — Stephen R. Covey

Our response to Jesus Christ will be total the day we experience how total is his love for us. Instead of our self-conscious efforts to be good, we should allow ourselves the luxury of letting ourselves be loved by God. And much of his love for us will be expressed through the medium of our friends' love for us. How else could he reveal it in a way that is tangible? "You are my friends if you do what I command ... This is my command: Love each other" (John 15:14, 17). — Brennan Manning

If we are to develop an intimate relationship, we need to know each other's desires. If we wish to love each other, we need to know what the other person wants. — Gary Chapman

This love, this mortal love, is of their own making," Hermes muses, "the thing we did not intend, foresee or sanction. How then should it not fascinate us? ... It is as if a fractious child had been handed a few timber shavings and a bucket of mud to keep him quiet only for him promptly to erect a cathedral ... Within the precincts of this consecrated house they afford each other sanctuary, excuse each other their failings, their sweats and smells, their lies and subterfuges, above all their ineradicable self-obsession. This is what baffles us, how they wriggled out of our grasp and somehow became free to forgive each other for all that they are not. — John Banville

I love you, Tess, he told me, tightening his arms around me as if he would never let go.
He'd better not.
We'd never let go of each other
not Jayden and me, and not the rest of us. We would always be together; we would always be a team.
No matter what happened. No matter what we went through. No matter where our lives took us.
We would always be a family. — Embee

I know he is afraid of that desert which would be around him if our love were to end, but he can't realize that I feel exactly the same. What he says aloud I say to myself silently and write it here. What can one build in the desert? Sometimes after a day when we have made love many times, I wonder whether it isn't possible to come to an end of sex, and I know that he is wondering too and is afraid of that point where the desert begins. What do we do in the desert if we lose each other? How does one go on living after that? — Graham Greene

If we accept that a mother can kill her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill each other? Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, rather, to use violence to get what they want. — Mother Teresa

Because here's the thing. We can do a lot in thirty-five days." He sat on the bed and pulled her down next to him. "I mean, think about books and movies. You can watch a great love story in two hours, right? Or read one in maybe two days? So imagine what we can do with thirty-five. We can celebrate a whole year of holidays. We can lock the door at night and turn the music up and memorize each other. We can taste and smell and touch every single thing we love about this whole town, so we never forget, no matter who we turn into out there." He hugged her hands tightly with his. "And then when it's time to leave each other, we'll go off smiling into the future, and we won't be distracted by all that 'when will I find true love' stuff people always worry about because they don't know how it feels. Because we'll already know how it feels. And if neither one of us ever gets another great love story, this one will be enough to last our whole entire lives. — J.C. Lillis

My Dearest Allie. I couldn't sleep last night because I know that it's over between us. I'm not bitter anymore, because I know that what we had was real. And if in some distant place in the future we see each other in our new lives, I'll smile at you with joy and remember how we spent the summer beneath the trees, learning from each other and growing in love. The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds, and that's what you've given me. That's what I hope to give to you forever. I love you. I'll be seeing you. Noah — Nicholas Sparks

She forced herself to ... turn and face him. It was easier with the width of the room between them. "I wanted to be able to take this relationship at face value, to enjoy it for what it was ... And I wanted to be sure I could walk away when it was over, completely unscathed. The problem is I can't. When you walked in this morning, all I could think was how much I'd wanted to see you, how much I'd missed you, how unhappy I'd because we were angry at each other."
She stopped, straightened her shoulders. He was grinning at her, rocking back and forth on his heels. In a minute she was sure he'd be whistling. "I'd appreciate it if you'd take that smug look off your face. This isn't -"
"I love you, Julia. — Nora Roberts

We became a tribe recalling the founding
two. Ducked in thru a door, we ate food
from Reunion, island in an ocean some-
where, we forgot which, ducked in, not a
trace
of them there. . . We clutched bodies, rubbed
each other's limbs, less in love with skin than
the memory of skin, skin's image, all the
more
extolling skin. . . Sexed insinuance, nixed
insistence in retreat. . . Would-be what-if,
what
if. . . We wanted it back, big promise, portent,
apocalypse,
urgency, plummet,
plunge — Nathaniel Mackey

Iehuda allowed his mind to follow, across the map of the wide world, across the empires and kingdoms that fought and tried to rule and subdue each other. And he imagined what might happen if these words traveled from mouth to mouth, from mind to mind, from one city to the next to the next, if this simple message- love your enemy- were the accepted creed of all the world. He did not see how it could happen.
"If one man went against it," he said at last, "the whole thing would be broken. In a world like that, a world of peace, a world of soft people with no knives, one man could destroy everything."
"Then we cannot rest until every man has heard it. Think," said Yehoshuah softly, "what shall we use up our lives for? More war, like our fathers and their fathers, more of that? Or shall we use ourselves for a better purpose? Is this not worth your life? — Naomi Alderman

Kids are tough sometimes. There are moments when I'm so frustrated and don't feel like we understand each other. When I hit a moment like this and words of aggravation are on the tip of my tongue, this is what I say to myself:
You have been given the unbelievable honor of taking care of and loving the next generation of people. Your work with them is hands down the most important work you'll ever do. Think about how many people these children will come in contact with in their life time. The messages and love you give them or don't give them will be your voice in the future. Think about that when you're aggravated or tired. Every word you speak over them matters. Your voice and the unspoken energy you're sending them are more powerful than you can possibly imagine. Speak to them as if they are Kings and Queens and you are on stage in front of thousands of people -because that's how they deserve to be treated.
Give them the best of you. — Brooke Hampton

Sharing love is personal to us. It begins within us. Then we seek to extend it outwardly. In relationships, what happens longterm is determined by each person's ability to receive and give love. If our love and all of us is accepted and reciprocated, something beautiful happens (if it isn't, deterioration of the relationship begins). I now believe that the "love of your life" is someone that transcends any other love experienced prior and becomes that person you've had the most love and adoration for. It's such a commonly used phrase. But, I finally understand it. The love of your life is the person with which you share real, unconditional love and all its blessings. — Camille Lucy

Parenting has nothing to do with perfection. Perfection isn't even the goal, not for us, not for our children. Learning together to live well in an imperfect world, loving each other despite or even because of our imperfections, and growing as humans while we grow our little humans, those are the goals of gentle parenting. So don't ask yourself at the end of the day if you did everything right. Ask yourself what you learned and how well you loved, then grow from your answer. That is perfect parenting. — L.R. Knost