“Conditional love is: I will only love you if you love me. Unconditional love is: I will love you even if you do not love me. It’s really easy to love passing strangers unconditionally. They demand nothing of you. It is really hard to love people unconditionally when they can hurt you.”
— Amanda Palmer
“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.”
—
Pablo Neruda, excerpt from Sonnet XVII (I Do Not Love You…)
fall in love with someone who wants you, who waits for you. who understands you even in the madness, someone who helps you, and guides you, someone who is your support, and your hope. fall in love with someone who talks with you after a fight. fall in love with someone who misses you and wants to be with you. do not fall in love only with a body or a face or with the idea of being in love
“Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.”
— Alain de Botton, Essays in Love
“I am half a bird half a girl. You are half of me and I am all for you.”
— Florence Welch, from “Useless Magic: Lyrics & Poetry,” published c. 2018
“Everyone thinks I’m showing off when I talk, ridiculous when I’m silent, insolent when I answer, cunning when I have a good idea, lazy when I’m tired, selfish when I eat one bite more than I should…”
— Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl
“…wild things in the darkness of her eyes.”
— Ralph Hodgson, from Eve, And Other Poems (1913); “The Gypsy Girl,”
“Even the silence has a story to tell you. Just listen. Listen.”
— Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming
(via books-n-quotes)
“I can’t tell you exactly what I’m looking for, but I’ll know it when it happens. I want to be breathless and weak, crumpled by the entrance of another person inside my soul.”
— Aimee Bender, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
“The only obsession everyone wants: ‘love.’ People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you’re whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You’re whole, and then you’re cracked open.”
— Philip Roth, The Dying Animal
