love
We were like gods at the dawning of the world, and our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.
Madeline Miller • The Song of Achilles: A Novel
It was like falling in love—the things that get you are so small, the things that keep you up at night are so particular to you that when you try to explain, the only reward anyone can give you is a dumb polite nod.
Ta-Nehisi Coates • Between the World and Me
Napoleon said men will die for bits of ribbon pinned to their chests, but the General understands that even more men will die for a man who remembered their names, as he does theirs.
Viet Thanh Nguyen • The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction)
Danny still didn’t understand, but it was okay. They were loving each other.
Stephen King • The Shining
What if my heart goes deaf?
Franny Choi • Floating, Brilliant, Gone
Yet he loved people: it seems that he lived his whole life with an absolute faith in people, though no one ever thought of him as simple or naïve. There was something in him that said, and made you believe (and this was so throughout his life), that he did not wish to sit in judgement on others and would never take it upon himself to censure
... See moreFyodor Dostoevsky • The Karamazov Brothers (Oxford World's Classics)
You believe in your partner; that is your task. But how that person acts with regard to your expectations and trust is other people’s tasks. When you push your wishes without having drawn that line, before you know it you’re engaging in stalker-like intervention. Suppose your partner did not act as you had wished. Would you still be able to believe... See more
Notes & Highlights for The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi
Objectively, this was not an unusual thought, but in falling in love with her, I had somehow entirely overlooked the possibility of reciprocation. I had counted more on loving than being loved. And if I had concentrated largely on the former dynamic, it was perhaps because being loved is always the more complicated of the two emotions, Cupid’s
... See moreAlain de Botton • On Love: A Novel
Love was paring myself down, again and again, until I was as smooth as a block of new marble, ready to become whatever the next one needed me to be.