love
Anyone who’s ever shifted from general affection and enthusiasm for a lover to outright obsession knows what I mean: the relationship is just there, occupying a small corner of your heart, and then you wake up one morning and some indefinable tide has turned forever and you can’t go back.
Caroline Knapp • Drinking: A Love Story
It let me know I’d be taken care of when the need became too strong. When you love somebody, or something, it’s amazing how willing you are to overlook the flaws.
Caroline Knapp • Drinking: A Love Story
To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.
from Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton
IN THE DARKNESS, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.
Madeline Miller • The Song of Achilles: A Novel
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
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)
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
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
That’s your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. Pull your act together and just go on.”