All the time I think I can never love you more than I already do. And then you do something or say something, and I love you more than ever. Like just now. Like now. How is it possible? Can you love someone more and more and at the same time, all the time, love them as much as it’s possible to love someone?
—Aidan Chambers in This is All
We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.
—Tom Robbins
Fear of being alone is not a good reason to stay. Leaving this man you’ve been with for six years won’t be easy, but you’ll be okay and so will he. The end of your relationship with him will likely also mark the end of an era of your life. In moving into this next era there are going to be things you lose and things you gain. Trust yourself.
—Cheryl Strayed in Tiny Beautiful Things
Love sought is good, but given unsought, is better.
—William Shakespeare
The love that lasts the longest is the love that is never returned.
—W. Somerset Maugham
D’you know what happens when you hurt people? When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.
—Arundhati Roy in The God of Small Things
I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.
—George Eliot
Once you love something, you always love it in some way. You have to. It’s, like, part of you for good.
—Sarah Dessen in What Happened to Goodbye
It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one's neighbor.
—Eric Hoffer
Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
—Iris Murdoch
When people care about each other, they always find a way to make it work.
—Nicholas Sparks in True Believer
I wanted someone to love who would stay: stay and be there, always.
—Audrey Niffenegger in The Time Traveler’s Wife
It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.
—John Updike in My Father’s Tears and Other Stories
Many who have spent a lifetime in love can tell you less of love than the child whose dog died yesterday.
—Thornton Wilder
Lovemaking is radical, while marriage is conservative.
—Eric Hoffer