❝We laugh and laugh, and nothing can ever be sad, no one can be lost, or dead, or far away: right now we are here, and nothing can mar our perfection, or steal the joy of this perfect moment.❞
— Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife
❝There were other refugees around him experiencing the same fears and helplessness, but Litvinoff didn’t find any comfort in this because there are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone.❞
— The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
❝He used to think that he wanted to be good, he wanted to be kind, he wanted to be brave and wise, but it was all pretty difficult. He wanted to be loved, too, if he could fit it in.❞
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is The Night
❝My father dreamed that one day he might teach another child to love ships in bottles. He knew there would be both sadness and joy in it; that it would always hold an echo of me.❞
— Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones
❝Actually that’s my secret — I can’t even talk about you to anybody because I don’t want any more people to know how wonderful you are.❞
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is The Night
❝You are not weak just because your heart feels so heavy. I have never met a heavy heart that wasn’t a phone booth with a red cape inside. Some people will never understand the kind of superpower it takes for some people to just walk outside.❞
— Andrea Gibson, “The Nutritionist”
❝All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life—where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it.❞
— Miranda July, It Chooses You
❝Even when I detach, I care. You can be separate from a thing and still care about it. If I wanted to detach completely, I would move my body away. I would stop the conversation mid-sentence. I would leave the bed. Instead, I hover over it for a second. I glance off in another direction. But I always glance back at you.❞
— David Levithan, The Lover’s Dictionary
❝He made the boxes because he was lonely. He didn’t have anyone to love, and he made the boxes so he could love them, and so people would know that he existed, and because birds are free and the boxes are hiding places for the birds so they will feel safe, and he wanted to be free and be safe. The boxes are for him so he can be a bird.❞
— Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife
I know that behind these three stars, in the darkness that is hidden now by light, are other planets and numberless stars. Whole galaxies, just like ours. Other worlds.
And maybe on one of them, there is another me. And I am wearing my green robe with my name stitched onto the chest. And I am standing on stage as somebody hands me my diploma and out in the audience, all I can see is the radiance of one man whose eyes are so shining blue they blind me. And he is smiling and weeping and he is my father and he loves me with all the force of the expanding universe. He looks up at me and he mouths the words, “Very much I love you.”
— Augusten Burroughs, A Wolf At The Table
❝Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.❞
— C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
❝It would be a privilege to have my heart broken by you.❞
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
❝You said Tell me about your books, your visions made
of flesh and light and I said This is the Moon. This is
the Sun. Let me name the stars for you.❞
— Richard Siken, “Snow and Dirty Rain”
❝I go to sleep alone, and wake up alone. I take walks. I work until I’m tired. I watch the wind play with the trash that’s been under the snow all winter. Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by absence?❞
— Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife
❝I feel safe with him because he is so not my ideal and I feel like I can be myself because I’m not in love with him.❞
— Gary Shteyngart, Super Sad True Love Story
