LOVE

"If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still
gave him love."
George Orwell, 1984
It may be if I had known them,
I would have loved them."
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself
This is not a letter but my arms around you for a brief moment.
"Youve got to keep looking. Even after you find them. Otherwise, you lose them."
Iain Thomas
"You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free."
Thich Nhat Hanh
"I love you. If you hadnt existed I would have had to invent you."
Elaine Dundy, The Dud Avocado
"And youll always love me wont you?
Yes.
And the rain wont make any difference?
No."
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
"I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday."
Lemony Snicket
"I used to build dreams about you."
F. Scott Fitzgerald
"you play along,
because you want to die for love,
you always have."
Richard Siken, Planet of Love
"His breath was hot against my neck. Ive never loved anyone before, so go easy on
me."
J. Sterling, The Perfect Game
"A couple of times in your life, it happens like that. You meet a stranger, and all you
know is that you need to know everything about them."
Lisa Kleypas, Sugar Daddy

Love is a mouthful of blood that tastes like sugar

Caitlyn Seihl
"I want your flowers like babies want Gods love."
Iron and Wine, Fever Dream
"This love will not
save you,
but it will make you
want to stay."
"There Will Be Days"
ANONYMOUS: When you fall in love, what'll it be like?
Caitlyn Seihl: Falling teeth-first into the sidewalk. So fucking messy. I wont apologize
for any if it.
"This is what you do: you sing. Every part of you. Your locks of hair sing, your eyes,
your hands, your smile. If I listen closely I can even hear your blood."
Francesca Lia Block
"Im in love with your honor. Im in love with your cheeks."
Blood Bank, Bon Iver
"This morning, with her, having coffee."
Johnny Cash, when asked for his definition of paradise
One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.
Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your
shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers.
Margaret Atwood, Good Bones
I love you. Ill love you until the death of love.
Pie oh Pah
The world moves for love; it kneels before it in awe.
The Village, 2004
I really dont know what I love you means. I think it means, Dont leave me here
alone.
Neil Gaiman
I dont want your love unless you know I am repulsive, and love me even as you know
it.
Georges Bataille

Not by how long you love, but by how well.

Rakishi, things my father wouldnt say
One day, someone will say I love you and you will hear family. That is a love worth
surrendering to.
Te V. Smith
We loved like we invented it.
Cristin OKeefe Aptowicz, Bowery Women
Even before you touched me,
I belonged to you; all you had to do
was look at me.
Louise Gluck, from The Burning Heart
We were never friends, not for a second. I loved you.
Orange Is The New Black
Anonymous: What would you say to someone once you realized that you were in love
with them?
I think Ive been writing about you.
Im sad that you cant know how I love.
Alexander Sumarokov
And then, one day, it was you.
T.B. LaBerge, The Novel of Us
I think of you in colors that dont exist.
You are in my blood. I cant help it. We cant be anywhere except together.
Francesca Lia Block
I have always loved everything about you. Even what I didnt understand.
Albert Camus
Love consists of this: two solitudes that meet, protect and greet each other.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
You shall love your crooked neighbor
With your crooked heart.
W.H. Auden, As I Walked Out One Evening
Im going to fall in love with you. You dont have to love me back. Im going to give
you my heart.

Theres no need for heartbreak warfare. Its called I love you I love you too. I
need more love You got more love, and you can get through life like that. Shouldnt
you just on days where you want more love be like I had a bad dream that you were
sleeping around, its really irrational, but just love me extra today. Why cant we just
have this thing where you say Just love me extra today. If I was with somebody and
they said Love me extra today, I would love them extra forever.
John Mayer
I kissed her. She kissed back.
How right the world was then.
Does that answer your question? I love you better. I always have. This may be a bad
thing to tell you, but its true. I love you better. Else why would I have given myself the
trouble of hurting you?
Steinbeck, East of Eden
Gatsby looked at Daisy in a way that every young girl wanted to be looked at.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
No, I mean it. You are so wonderful and open and honest, okay? You are like
something Ive never even touched before. I think youd be the wild on the
mountainside, or something. There is a picture in my head when I think of you, but I
cant get it out in words. I think of lavender when I think of you.
"I am so in love with you that there isnt anything else."
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
"I want a soul mate who can sit me down, shut me up, tell me ten things I dont already
know, and make me laugh. I dont care what you look like, just turn me on. And if you
can do that, I will follow you on bloody stumps through the snow. I will nibble your
mukluks with my own teeth. I will do your windows. I will care about your feelings. Just
have something in there."
Henry Rollins
"What if you didnt run? This one time. What if you stayed, and let love overtake you?"
Josh Bennett
"Some hearts understand each other, even in silence."
Yasmin Mogahed
I love you, but Im mad at you is one of the most freeing, important things you can say
in a stable relationship. Does that make sense? To know that you have the ability and the
right to be mad at someone and know that it doesnt mean things are over, that it doesnt
mean things are irreparable. That it just means Im mad, but God, I love you. I love you.
Now leave me alone.

I looked and looked at her, and I knew, as clearly as I know that I will die, that I loved
her more than anything I had ever seen or imagined on earth.
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
You are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing.
E.E. Cummings
If someday the moon calls you by your name dont be surprised,
Because every night I tell her about you.
Shahrazad al-Khalij
Take it all back. Life is boring, except for flowers, sunshine, your perfect legs. A glass of
cold water when you are really thirsty. The way bodies fit together. Fresh and young and
sweet. Coffee in the morning. These are just moments. I struggle with the in-betweens. I
just want to never stop loving like there is nothing else to do, because what else is there
to do?
Pablo Neruda
Messy love is better than none,
I guess. Im no authority
on sane living.
Margaret Atwood
"I love you more than my own skin."
Frida Kahlo
"Keep me up till five only because all your stars are out, and for no other reason."
J.D. Salinger
She is not my girl.
She belongs to herself. And I am blessed, for with all her freedom, she still comes back to
me, moment-to-moment, day-by-day, and night-by-night.
How much more blessed can I be?
Avraham Chaim, Thoughts after The Alchemist
"There is always something left to love."
Gabriel Garca Mrquez One Hundred Years Of Solitude
I love you, what star do you live on?"
Conrad Aiken, Chance Meetings
The miracle of loveis that it is no miracle.
Ally Acker, from The Closed Door
"It has made me better, loving you."

Henry James, from The Portrait of A Lady

"Look at her. I would die for her. I would kill for her. Either way, what bliss."
The Addams Family (1991)
"To love is to undress our names."
Octavio Paz, from Sunstone
"She loves him, she drew in her breaththe first time she saw him and neverbreathed out
again, not ever."
Patricia Lockwood, from See a Furious Waterfall Without Water
"Love doesnt just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the
time, made new."
Ursula K. Le Guin The Lathe of Heaven
"What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do with its love?"
Sylvia Plath, from Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices
"I dont know how to say it, so Im writing it down. I want to kiss your bad days on the
forehead. I want to stroke your hair in the morning. I want to know what your mouth
tastes like when you get off the phone with your mother. Thats it. Thats all."
"Thats It. Thats All." Trista Mateer
"What I have loved so far, I have loved in order to be able to love you."
Paul Celan, from a letter to his wife Gisele, 1952
"I remember every single spot of light that ever gouged a shadow beside your bones."
Zelda Fitzgerald
"Im not used to being loved. I wouldnt know what to do."
F. Scott Fitzgerald, More Than Just A House
"Oh I love your head, honey, and everything in itI just forgot you were human for a
minute."
"As someone who tried to love somebody."
Bob Dylan, on how he would like to be remembered
"I have loved you so much that everything else sounds like a lie."
Ernest Hemingway, from a letter to Martha Gellhorn
"Yes, youve entered my bloodstream, the room, the whole springtimeis filled with
you"

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Selected Poems

"They were not holding hands, but their shadows were."
Toni Morris, Beloved
"She is not easy, she is not peaceful;She pulses like a heart on my hill."
Sylvia Plath, from an early draft of Elm
"Hes more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the
same.
Emily Bronte
"You are a Sunday porch I could do nothing onand feel like everything was happening."
Derrick Brown, excerpt from Waltzing the Hurricane
Goodnight and great love to you. We see the same stars."
George Mallory, from a letter to his wife Ruth during the 1921 Everest Reconnaissance
Expedition
"All my other seasons I spend facing her."
Steve Brightman, from Literary Sexts
"The thing about love is that we come alive in bodies not our own."
Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin
"I cant promise you very much.The fragile side of love is the only side there is.But I
promise I will love you until I stop loving you.and when that happens, Ill start again."
Salma.D
"Were all just walking each other home."
Ram Dass
"I feel like a part of my soul has loved you since the beginning of everything. Maybe
were from the same star."
Emery Allen
"You were in love with me all the time, only you didnt know it."
Virginia Woolf, from The Voyage Out
"When I think about my immediate reaction to that redheaded girl, it seems to spring
from an appreciation of natural beauty. I mean the heart pleasure you get from looking at
speckled leaves or the palimpsest bark of plane trees in Provence. There was something
richly appealing in her color combination, the ginger snaps floating in the milk-white
skin, the gold highlights in the strawberry hair. It was like autumn, looking at her. It was
like driving up north to see the colors."
Jeffrey Eugenides

"I love your silences, they are like mine."

Anais Nin
"And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth."
Raymond Carver
"The more you love the more they feel afraid"
Ally Rhodes
"Perhaps were not magic anymore. Perhaps were just comfortable. We just know our
way around one another. We know which wounds to cauterize and which to let bleed."
Donna-Marie Riley
Love liberates. It doesn't blind. Love says, 'I love you.' I love you if you're in China. I
love you if you're cross town. I love you if you're in Harlem. I love you! I would like to
be near you. I'd like to have your arms around me. I'd like to hear your voice in my ear.
But, that's not possible now, so - I love you. Go.
Maya Angelou
What is there to say? You know how much I have loved you.
Zelda to Scott Fitzgerald
Since we first met, I have loved you with whatever I have had to love you with.
Zelda to Scott Fitzgerald
He asked me when I planned to come back. Always, I said.
Roberto Bolao, The Savage Detectives
She's like my name; I know there's a time I didn't have it, but I can't actually feel what
that was like.
James Bradley, Finally, We Agree
HEARTBREAK
"If you forget everything else about me, please remember this. I walked down that street
and I never looked back and I love you. I love you. I love you so much that I shall hate
you for ever for today."
John Fowles, The Magus
Remember how it was when we kissed? Armfuls and armfuls of light thrown right at us.
A rope dropping down from the sky. How can the word love and the word life even fit in
the mouth?
Jandy Nelson, The Sky is Everywhere

I leave the number and a short

message on every green Volvo
in town
Is anything wrong?
I miss you.
574-7423
The phone rings constantly.
One says, Are you bald?
Another, How tall are you in
your stocking feet?
Most just reply, Nothings wrong.
I miss you, too.
The Ubiquity Of The Need For Love, Ronald Koertge
You happened to me. You were as deep down as Ive ever been. You were inside me like
my pulse.
Marilyn Hacker from "Nearly a Valediction"
"I should have told you, no one has ever learned to love me in public."
A History of Mouths - Carrie Rudzinski
"I keep thinking you already know. I keep thinking Ive sent you letters that were only
ever written in my mind."
Iain Thomas
Tonight youre thinking of cities under crownsof snow and I stare at you like Im
looking through a window, counting birds.
Richard Siken
You wanted happiness, I cant blame you for that,and maybe a mouth sounds idiotic
when it blathers on about joybut tell meyou love this, tell me youre not miserable."
Richard Siken, Seaside Improvisation
Please dont, above all, plant me in your heart. I grow too quick.
Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets To Orpheus
"Its good that hes gone, but dont let him be too gone. Hes got to be candle blown outin
the other room gone. Or exhaust pipehuffing down the block gone.Not closure-gone. Not
someone-elses-baby-gone. Not cut your hair gone. He cant ever be too faraway to hurt
you, honey."
Megan Falley, Lana Del Rey Intervenes When She Notices Ive Stopped Writing About
My Ex
You are not a reflection of the people who cant love you.
Caitlyn Siehl

We met at the wrong time. Thats what I keep telling myself, anyway. Maybe one day,
years from now, well meet in a coffee shop in a far away city somewhere and we could
give it another shot.
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
"And I cried. For myself. For this woman talkin about love. For all the women who have
ever stretched their bodies out anticipating civilization and finding ruins."
Sonia Sanchez, Homegirls and Handgrenades
"Forgive me for my love- for ruining you with my love."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
"Youd break yourheart to make it bigger"
Richard Siken, excerpt of Landscape with a Blur of Conquerors
It hurts to leave a light on for nobody."
Graham Foust, Slow Survivor
I cant talk. No one touches me. Youre so beautiful. No one knows me. Please, dont
leave."
Henry Rollins, Black Coffee Blues
I guess when you try to forget something, you have to forget everything.
Don Draper, Mad Men
"a first lesson in the fragility of love and the preternatural cowardice of men"
Junot Diaz
"the silence that lay between them now, stronger than love"
Junot Diaz
"She was the type of girlfriend god gives you young so you know loss the rest of your
life."
Junot Diaz
"Sometimes, like love, the neurons just cross fire. You dont get everything back."
Patricia Kirkpatrick, from Survivors Guilt
"You want to go backto where the sky was inside us."
Margaret Atwood, Selected Poems
even after a crash,
a key still fits the ignition.There just isnt anything left to drive."
Sarah Kay, excerpt from, Something We Dont Talk About, Part I in her book, No
Matter the Wreckage

"Some days I miss you so much Id jump off the roof of your office building just to catch
a glimpse of you on the way down."
Jeffrey McDaniel
"I think about you. But I dont say it anymore."
Marguerite Duras, Hiroshima, Mon Amour
"You can tell so much about a person by the way they leave you."
Redvers Bailey
"Its strange. I felt less lonely when I didnt know you."
Jean-Paul Sartre, from The Flies, in No Exit and the Flies
"I havent left you. I dont leave you, not ever. Do you know why? Because when you are
gone I re-create you from memory. The scent of your skin, the mole above the broom of
your mustache, how you fit in my palms. Your skin dark and rich as piloncillo. This face
in my hands. I miss you. I miss you even now as you lie next to me."
Sandra Cisneros, from Eyes of Zapata, Woman Hollering Creek
"the centre of every poem is this:I have loved you. I have had to deal with that."
Salma Deera
I am not small enough to need you & you are not big enough to let me.
"I am no stranger to love and I am not waiting for you, because I believe we will be
reborn, because I believe everything, and I believe that we will meet again and suffer
together again."
Richard Siken, Lillian Gish Goes to Hell
"I do not tolerate a world emptied of you. I have tried. For a year I have called every
black tree Mary Morevna; I have looked for your face in the patterns of the ice. In the
dark, I have pored over the loss of you like pale gold."
Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless
"Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream."
Euripides, Herakles
"If you walk into a room and notice what is missing from it, its still there, isnt it?"
Caitlyn Siehl, A Letter to Love
Youre thinking about her all the time.'
'And you know that because?'
'Because youre not talking about it. I know you. Theres a pause, then the truth.'"
Beginners

"I am thinking about how I now have to unlearn all of his secrets. Become a tourist to his
body again, blink against the hurt."
Kristina Haynes, The Breakup Sweats
"how he loved and yetwished to leave you: always both, at once."
Rainer Maria Rilke
"There are things sadderthan you and I. Some peopledo not even touch."
Sonia Sanchez
"Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I'd rather have
cancer than a dishonest heart."
Capote, Breakfast at Tiffany's
"Youll ache. And youre going to love it. It will crush you. And youre still going to love
all of it. Doesnt it sound lovely beyond belief?"
Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden
"And if all that is meaningless, I want to be curedof a craving for something I cannot find
And of the shame of never finding it."
T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party
"There, Ive said it:someone I was could have loved you."
Marty McConnell, Miniature Bridges, Your Mouth
"I can never unlove you. Ill just love you in a different way now."
Marco, Starting Over Again
"Thank you for every kindness. Thank you for being someone I was always proud to be
with. For your guts, for your sweetness. For how you always looked, for how I always
wanted to touch you. God, you were my life. I apologize for every time I ever failed
you."
What Dreams May Come
"You want everything so much and when you get it its over and you dont give a damn."
Ernest Hemingway, The Garden Of Eden
"So I wait for you like a lonely housetill you will see me again and live in me. Till then
my windows ache."
Pablo Neruda
"I ran and I knew you wouldnt catch me.You are a fever I am learning to live with, and
everything is happening at the wrong end of a very long tunnel."
Richard Siken
"We all have our scars. From loving someone too deeply. From wanting to protect

someone too much."

Mei Tachibana, Say I Love You
"Thats the trouble with loving a wild thing: Youre always left watching the door."
Edith Pattou, East
"I dream the love is swallowing itself."
Anne Sexton, The Break Away
"Sometimes its enough just to say
their names like a rosary, ordinary names
linked by nothing but the fact
that they belong to men who loved you."
Kim Addonizio
"We weep together
and make a bed for rain."
Frida Kahlo, from The Diary Of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait
"I thought
that pain meant
I was not loved.
It meant I loved."
Louise Glck, from First Memory
"You just wanted to prove there was one safe place, just one safe place where you could
love him. You have not found that place yet. You have not made that place yet. You are
here. You are here. Youre still right here."
Richard Siken
"I meant skies all empty aching blue. I meant years. I meant all of them with you."
Kate Clanchy
"You will always run away with her. You will always lose her. You will always be a fool.
You have already done all of this and will do it again."
Catherynne M. Valente
Its just that I coulda swore you had sung me a love song back there, and that you meant
it, but I guess sometimes people just chew with their mouth open.
Buddy Wakefield
"I become such a monster when I miss you.
Darling, it is always so dark when youre gone."
Clementine von Radics
That time you confused a lesson for a soul mate.

Dream Hampton
I am like a table
that eats its own legs off
because its fallen
in love with the floor.
Cate Marvin
A home filled with nothing but yourself. Its heavy, that lightness. Its crushing, that
emptiness.
Margaret Atwood, The Tent
From now on, love,
we will always be about to destroy
each other, always about to touch.
-Anne Sexton
I know youre not here, I can see it in your eyes when we talk. Wherever you are, come
back soon.
Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You
If you leave me, Ill be ruined or some other word that doesnt exist.
Saraband dir. By Ingmar Bergman
I have buried you in every place Ive been. You keep ending up in my shaking hands.
Bon Iver, from A Song For A Lover Of Long Ago
You wonder though why love feels like laying down and letting someone roll over you
why love feels like agreeing to lay down and die.
Kristen Fiore, Wrong Ways To Say I Am Not In Love With You
You are a souvenir shop, where he goes to remember how much people miss him when
hes gone.
Sierra DeMulder, On Watching Someone You Love Love Someone Else from New Shoes
on a Dead Horse
Some things, once youve loved them, become yours forever. And if you try to let them
go, they only circle back and return to you. They become a part of who you are, or they
destroy you.
Kill Your Darlings
It takes a lot of love to learn
that you can never miss someone
into coming back.
Sanam, blue and you

And in the end, we were all just humans drunk on the idea that love, only love, could
heal our brokenness.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
You are my heart, kid. How can I live without my heart?
Blow
Do you remember the way the girls
would call out love you!
conveniently leaving out the I
as if they didnt want to commit to their own declarations.
And I agree that the I is a pretty heavy concept.
David Berman, Self-Portrait at 28
I think this is sadness, what I feel
When I wake up after dreaming of his hands
pressing against my hips.
Kristina Haynes, The Poet Loses Her Mind
"You like him because hes a lost boy. Believe me, Ive seen it happen before. But do you
know what happens to girls who love lost boys? They become lost themselves. Without
fail."
David Levithan, Every Day
"I am only responsible for my own heart; you offered yours up for the smashing, my
darling. Only a fool would give out such a vital organ."
Anais Nin
"This is an apology letter to the both of us for how long it took me to let things go."
Buddy Wakefield; Hurling Crowbirds at Mockingbars
"I love you, I love you,
but Im turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist."
Frank OHara
"Dont tell them. Ever. Walk around with a psychosomatic limp that is only apparent
when you hear their name. Duck under desks when they come around because thats what
your parents did when they were in school and something threatened to destroy them.
When they come near you, stop breathing. Write poems about them until your fingers
bleed. Say its because youre trying to learn how to play guitar. Get drunk and do
nothing with the courage it gives you. Love them so much that youre bedridden. When
they ask you whats wrong, blame it on a pre-existing condition; a family history of
fatigue and cowardice. When people ask you why youre so short of breath, tell them you

have asthma. Go to the nurse after your worst panic attack, let her tell you that you might
have a heart condition. Go to the cardiologist and believe him when he says the same.
Take the bus home and put your feet over the poems people have written on the seat in
front of you. Hold your own hand and blame them for not being there.
When they ask you if you love them, say nothing. Use your inhaler. Pick your nails until
they bleed.
They will figure it out eventually. They will come to you on their knees with an offering
and you will not take it. Tell them that they can do better, that youre sorry. Mean it.
Close the door on them quietly and let your bones collapse into gunpowder. Light them
on fire. Your body was a house that you never learned how to let light into. Settle for
flames instead of the sun. Convince yourself that love is burning. Let it ruin you without
an audience."
How to Love Someone Like an Apology
"Could I have loved you better? Maybe. If thats true, then Im sorry. Could I have loved
you more? I dont think its possible."
Elizabeth Noble, Things I Want My Daughters to Know
"I dont miss you, but I remember you. You taught a lesson and for that I give you
gratitude."
Slug
I dont mean to suggest that I loved you the best. I cant keep track of each fallen robin.
I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel, thats all, I dont even think of you that often.
Chelsea Hotel #2
"I know youll never love me but maybe youll stay for awhile."
Henry Rollins, Solipsist
"And when I asked you how youd been, I meant I missed you more than Ive ever
missed anything before."
Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You
"I think Im in love with missing you more than Im in love with you."
Secret Lover Keeper, Even Though Im A Woman
"Before I thought the opposite of I love you was I dont love you, but now the
opposite of I love you is I cant do anything for you."
Han Se Kyung
I dont know what to say to you except that it tore the heart out of my body saying
goodbye to you."
Vita Sackville-West
I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I
feel in me, and give it back as good as I give.

Sylvia Plath
"He exhausts me and I dont love him. Only boys I love are allowed to exhaust me."
Fortesa Latifi
Do you want it? Do you want anything I have? Will you throw me to the ground like
you mean it, reach inside and wrestle it out with your bare hands? If you love me, Henry,
you dont love me in a way I understand.
Richard Siken, Wishbone
This is why it hurts the way it hurts.
You have too many words in your head. There are too many ways to describe the way
you feel. You will never have the luxury of a dull ache.
You must suffer through the intricacy of feeling too much.
Iain S. Thomas, I Wrote This For You
SEX
"I want you everywhere, by my side and between my thighs.
I want your flowers in my hair and your name under my nails.
I want you with me, your sugar in my tea, my eyelashes on your sheets.
Write your name on me, when my heart breaks, I want it to be blinding."
Du, J.M.
Come over, I want to sober up inside you.
Gregory Sherl
Act one, in which she pretends she doesnt care about him. Act two, in which he
pretends he doesnt care about her but he goes right for her. Act three, in which it all
plays out the way she planned it. Shell eat him alive.
Almost Famous
I want to kiss someone so hard I leave teeth marks behind. I want those desperate brutal
kisses that make it seem as if Ive been eating blueberries. I want the evidence of another
mouth having been here. A halfway house for the hungry.
Kristina Haynes
Standing on my roof, this poem yells, These words are red because you have touched
me holy.
Gregory Sherl, Poem as Happy Hour
Theres no love. Only words to get what you want.
Brief Crossing
Lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off.

I no longer need you to fuck me as hard

as I hate myself.
Make love to me
like you know I am better than the worst thing I ever did.
Go slow.
Im new to this
but I have seen nearly every city from a rooftop without jumping.
I have realized
that the moon did not have to be full for us to love it.
We are not tragedies
stranded here beneath it.
Buddy Wakefield, We Were Emergencies
The way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke.
"Your thighs are apple trees, your knees are a southern breeze."
William Carlos Williams
And your very flesh shall be a great poem."
Walt Whitman
When I havent been kissed in a long time, I create civil disturbances, then insult the
cops who show up, till one of them grabs me by the collar and hurls me up against the
squad car, so I can remember, at least for a moment, what its like to be touched.
Jeffrey McDaniel, "When a Man Hasnt Been Kissed
"And I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody
would ever see us any more."
Franz Kafka
Perfectly able to hold my own hand.
But I still cant kiss my own neck."
Wye Oak - Civilian
"I twist like a sunflowerAt the sound of your voice"
Kait Rokowski, The Civil Guillotine in So Much For the Mercy Kill
"I feel like you are somethingI say in the dark."
Wendy Xu, We Are Both Sure To Die
"I am cherry-stainedteeth. You arethe absence of yes."
Emily ONeill, Wedding Soup
"Jesus, Jesus he says, but hes not praying to Jesus, hes praying to you, not to your body
or your face but to that space you hold at the centre, which is the shape of the universe
How does it feel to be a god ?"

Margaret Atwood, Worship

"I do not feel good, Ive got the sad sads. All I want to do is fuck you."
Charles Bukowski, Somebody
"I cant do it. Ive been so good, but I just cant go on. He comes into the bathroom when
Im flossing my teeth. I long to be in an elevator with you, stuck between floors. Tell me
something filthy. I hate love, dont you?"
Margaret Atwood, Wilderness Tips
"Shes mad but shes magic.
Theres no lie in her fire."
Charles Bukowski
"Dont touch me if you dont mean it."
The War Boys (2009)
Tell me,how does it feel with my teeth in your heart?"
Euripides, Medea
"When I am lonely for boys its their bodies I miss. I study their hands lifting the
cigarettes in the darkness of the movie theaters, the slope of a shoulder, the angle of a hip.
Looking at them sideways, I examine them in different lights. My love for them is visual:
that is the part of them I would like to possess. Dont move, I think. Stay like that, let me
have that."
Margaret Atwood
Peel your heart like a pomegranate.
Offer it to him, palms outward.
Say "eat."
Watch him come away
stained red by you.
You're in his teeth.
He'll kiss you with that mouth.
Azra T.
SELF LOVE
"My alone feels so good, Ill only have you if youre sweeter than my solitude."
Warsan Shire
The sun is perfect and you woke this morning. You have enough language in your mouth
to be understood. You have a name, and someone wants to call it. Five fingers on your
hand and someone wants to hold it. If we just start there, every beautiful thing that has
and will ever exist is possible. If we start there, everything, for a moment, is right in the
world.

Warsan Shire
how Shine said now pussy is good and thats no jive /
but youve got to swim not fuck to stay alive
Etheridge Knight
Your body is the house you grew up in, how dare you try to burn it to the ground."
Sierra Demulder
"Dont be someone that searches, finds, and then runs away"
Paulo Coelho
In sorrow, pretend to be fearless. In happiness, tremble."
Jane Hirshfield, last lines to In Praise of Coldness, in Each Happiness Ringed by Lions
"Dont bend; dont water it down; dont try to make it logical; dont edit your own soul
according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."
Franz Kafka
"One foot in front of the otherthrough leaves, over bridges."
Kurt Vonnegut, 1960
Power is being told you are not loved and not being destroyed by it.
Madonna
We all have a great need for acceptance, but you must trust that your beliefs are unique,
your own.
Dead Poets Society
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when
youre uncool.
Lester Bangs, Almost Famous
God: I own you like I own the caves.
The Ocean: not a chance. No comparison.
God: I made you. I could tame you.
The Ocean: At one time, maybe. But not now.
God: I will come to you, freeze you, break you.
The Ocean: I will spread myself like wings. I am a billion tiny feathers. You have no
idea whats happened to me.
Dave Eggers
And you tried to change, didnt you? Closed your mouth more. Tried to be softer,
prettier, less volatile, less awake You cant make homes out of human beings.
Someone should have told you that. And if he wants to leave, then let him leave. You are
terrifying, and strange, and beautiful. Something not everyone knows how to love.

Warsan Shire, For Women Who Are Difficult To Love

How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if
she were a perfectly normal human being.
Oscar Wilde
Maybe theres something in all of this
I missed. But if its selfless
love youre looking for,
youve got the wrong goddess.
Margaret Atwood
And God said, Love Your Enemy, and I obeyed him and loved myself.
I am a lover without a lover. I am lovely and lonely and I belong deeply to myself.
Warsan Shire
And what about all the good I have in my heart does it mean anything?
Saul Bellow, Herzog
"If opening your eyes, or getting out of bed, or holding a spoon, or combing your hair is
the daunting Mount Everest you climb today, that is okay."
Carmen Ambrosio
I am. I am. I am."
Sylvia Path, Mad Girls Love Song
"You are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering."
Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
If you look at the fact that you have a roof over your head, food to eat, that you are
young and beautiful and live in a peaceful land, then no, you have nothing to be sad
about. But the fact is, we are not only a physical body, we have souls too, and sometimes
our souls get sick. If you break a leg you don't just say 'I have no reason to have a broken
leg' and ignore it; you seek help. It's the same when your soul gets hurt. Don't apologize
for being sad.
My doctor when I told her I had no reason to be sad
"I see the sun, and if I dont see the sun, I know its there. And theres a whole life in that,
in knowing that the sun is there."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"You think I cant tame that? I always come home. Always. Ravenous. Loaded. You
know better than anybody:Im bigger than God."
Jeanann Verlee, The Mania Speaks

"And now that you dont have to be perfect, you can be good."
John Steinbeck, East of Eden
I don't want to be like water, no definite shape until I'm held
CachaBacha, Mother Tongue
"I dreamed I called you on the telephoneto say: be kinder to yourself."
Adrienne Rich, For The Dead
I love your loneliness. It is brave. It makes the universe want to protect you.
Ben Okri, Astonishing the Gods
"I never saw a wild thingsorry for itself."
D.H. Lawrence, Self-Pity
"The flower doesnt dream of the bee. It blossoms and the bee comes."
"I wish I knew how to move slower. How to kiss hard and still come up for air. How to be
kind to each moment like it is my very best lover, an engine of pumpkin sweat and skin. I
hope I learn to love myself when no one is looking. I need to drink more water. maybe
that is all I ever need to do. Drink more water. Kiss you. Walk to the store. I am the
slowest revolutionary."
Lauren Zuniga, dear lemon engine from the smell of good mud
"People need to be encouraged. People need to be reminded of how wonderful they are.
People need to be believed intold that they are brave and smart and capable of
accomplishing all the dreams they dream and more. Remind each other of this."
Stacey Jean Speer
"Bravery isnt fleeing. Its kissing the teeth of something you know could eat you in an
instant."
Lacey Roop
Hal: Well, lets say, when you were little, you always dreamed of some day getting a
lion? And you wait and you wait and you wait and you wait and the lion doesnt come.
Then along comes a giraffe. You can be alone or you can be with the giraffe.
Oliver: Id wait for the lion.
Hal: Thats why I worry about you.
"the older I get, the more I see how women are described as having gone mad, when
what theyve actually become is knowledgeable and powerful and fucking furious."
Sophie Heawood
"He was born in fury and he lived in lightening. Tom came headlong into life. He was a
giant in joy and enthusiasms. He didn't discover the world and its people, he created
them."
John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. Its hot in the summer and cold in the winter. Its round
and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, youve got about a hundred years here.
Theres only one rule that I know of, babies God damn it, youve got to be kind.
Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
ART
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an
artist.
Oscar Wilde
Men of learning are those who have read the contents of books. Thinkers, geniuses, and
those who have enlightened the world and furthered the race of men, are those who have
made direct use of the book of the world.
Schopenhauer
"I believed that I wanted to be a poet, but deep down, I just wanted to be a poem."
Jamie Gil de Bieda
"The belief in poetry is a magnificent fury, or it is nothing."
Wallace Stevens, in a letter to Henry Church
"Do you ever wonder who I write about; because quite frankly, I wonder too."
Julie Martinez
Listen, real poetry doesnt say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all
doors. You can walk through any one that suits you.
Jim Morrison
"I had learned a line. And it had silenced me."
Eavan Boland, from The Making of a Poem
"If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint, and that
voice will be silenced."
Vincent Van Gogh
I write about you all the time, I said aloud.
Every time I say I, it refers to you.
Louise Gluck, from Visitors From Abroad
Beautiful things dont ask for attention.
We dont read and write poetry because its cute. We read and write poetry because we
are members of the human race, and the human race is filled with passion.
Dead Poets Society

Poetry, beauty, romance, love these are what we stay alive for.
Dead Poets Society
We ware the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams.
Willy Wonka
She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasnt supposed to look nice; it was
supposed to make you feel something.
"I wish youd stop
Asking poets for the truth.
Every single one of us is a liar."
And every single one of you is a poet by Aishah Malak
"Every moment is a poem if you hold it right."
Lauren Zuniga
"Sometimes a poem tells me, No. No. I do not want to be written right now. And I
understand. I am a patient lover."
N. Waheed
"I dreamed you were a poem,I say, a poem I wanted to show someone "
Adrienne Rich, no. II of Twenty-One Love Poems, The Dream of a Common
Language: Poems 1974-1977
"Words were different when they lived inside of you."
Benjamin Alire Saenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe
"All new learning looks at first like chaos."
Adrienne Rich, Powers of Recuperation
"Im a poet, the people I love will always be somewhere else."
Kait Rokowski
"You just dont know writers. Theyll use anything, anybody. Theyll eat their young."
Dennis Potter
THE HUMAN CONDITION
If, by the virtue of charity or the circumstance of desperation, you ever chance to spend a
little time around a Substance-recovery halfway facility like Enfield MAs state-funded
Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts
That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do.
That sleeping can be a form of emotional escape and can with sustained effort be abused.
That purposeful sleep-deprivation can also be an abusable escape.

That you do not have to like a person in order to learn from him/her/it.
That loneliness is not a function of solitude.
That logical validity is not a guarantee of truth.
That it takes effort to pay attention to any one stimulus for more than a few seconds.
That boring activities become, perversely, much less boring if you concentrate intently on
them.
That if enough people in a silent room are drinking coffee it is possible to make out the
sound of steam coming off the coffee.
That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt.
That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you
realize how seldom they do.
That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness.
That it is possible to fall asleep during an anxiety attack.
That concentrating intently on anything is very hard work.
That 99% of compulsive thinkers thinking is about themselves; that 99% of this selfdirected thinking consists of imagining and then getting ready for things that are going to
happen to them; and then, weirdly, that if they stop to think about it, that 100% of the
things they spend 99% of their time and energy imagining and trying to prepare for all the
contingencies and consequences of are never good. In short that 99% of the heads
thinking activity consists of trying to scare the everliving shit out of itself.
That it is possible to make rather tasty poached eggs in a microwave oven.
That some peoples moms never taught them to cover up or turn away when they sneeze.
That the people to be most frightened of are the people who are the most frightened.
That it takes great personal courage to let yourself appear weak.
That no single, individual moment is in and of itself unendurable.
That other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if
those people are stupid.
That having a lot of money does not immunize people from suffering or fear.
That trying to dance sober is a whole different kettle of fish.
That different people have radically different ideas of basic personal hygiene.
That, perversely, it is often more fun to want something than to have it.
That if you do something nice for somebody in secret, anonymously, without letting the
person you did it for know it was you or anybody else know what it was you did or in any
way or form trying to get credit for it, its almost its own form of intoxicating buzz.
That anonymous generosity, too, can be abused.
That it is permissible to want.
That everybody is identical in their unspoken belief that way deep down they are
different from everyone else.
That this isnt necessarily perverse.
That there might not be angels, but there are people who might as well be angels.
David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
"I almost started believing in God
just so I had someone to talk to
about you."
Caitlyn Siehl,Almost

I either eat too much or starve myself. Sleep for 14 hours or have insomniac nights. Fall
in love very hard or hate passionately. I dont know what grey is. I never did.
"I sleep. I dream. I make up things that I would never say. I say them very quietly."
Richard Siken
I was never insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.
Poe
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of
themselves, and wiser people are so full of doubt.
Bertrand Russell
Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.
Carlin
Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Its not a fucking womans job to be consumed and invaded and spat out so that some
fucking man can feel as if hes evolved.
Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone.
Find someone whose demons are compatible with your own.
"My feelings are too loud for words and too shy for the world."
Dejan Stojanovic
"Once, I wanted to be the side of a war that lost A man loves a pillaged town A place that
will king him for bringing it back to life"
Meghan Privitello, Love, Cases of Falling Out Of
Have a drink and shut up. Or shut up and get out.
From my experience, the prettier the girl is, the more nuts she is. Which makes you
insane.
Man is capable of as much atrocity as he has imagination.
"among other things you will find that you are not the first one who was ever confused
and frightened and even sickened by human behavior"
Salinger
"It seems that when you want to make a woman into a hero, you hurt her first. When you

want to make a man into a hero, you hurt also a woman first."
Leigh Alexander
"Do we simply stare at whats horrible and forgive it?"
Richard Siken, Snow And Dirty Rain
When is a monster not a monster?
Oh, when you love it.
Oh, when you used to sing it to sleep.
"People who have monsters recognize each other. They know each other without even
saying a word."
Benjamin Alire Senz, Last Night I Sang To The Monster
I think hell is something you carry around with you. Not somewhere you go.
Neil Gaiman
Monsters are real; ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.
Stephen King
Life is pain. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
Wesley, The Princess Bride
Your murderers come with smiles. They come as your friends.
"Ghosts dont haunt us. Thats not how it works. Theyre present among us because we
wont let go of them."
Sue Grafton, M Is for Malice
"Birds born in a cage think flying is an illness."
Alejandro Jodorowsky
I know too much about life to have any optimism.
Louis C.K.
My dear,
Find what you love and let it kill you.
Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual
nothingness.
Let it kill you and let it devour your remains.
For all things will kill you, both slowly and fastly, but its much better to be killed by a
lover.
Falsely yours
Bukowski

I will tell you what she was like. She was like a piano in the country where everyone
has had their hands cut off.
Angela Carter
Youll meet her, shes very pretty, even though sometimes shes sad for many days at a
time. Youll see, when she smiles, youll love her.
Pans Labyrinth
Desire can turn anything into a god.
Mark Doty from The Death of Antinous
"She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation."
Margaret Atwood
"But some people cant tell where it hurts.
They cant calm down.
They cant ever stop howling."
Margaret Atwood
"Can you sit still on fire? With the whole world around you burning and you dont
know where to go can you sit still on fire?"
Vanessa Veselka, on summing up her book Zazen in one single statement
TIME & PLACE
"There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours."
Jean-Paul Sartre
We were born before the wind
Also younger than the sun
Van Morrison
Hark, now hear the sailors cry
Smell the sea and feel the sky
Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic
Van Morrison
America, why are your libraries full of tears?"
Allen Ginsberg, America
There are only two directions in the map of my life: the way to you, and the way from
you.
Nick Lantz, How To Travel Alone
"I loved you only with my girl-heart, the false one that like a baby tooth lost its root and
fell away."

Nancy Reddy, Fervent Missive

"When the battery in my watch died, I still wore it. There was something about the watch
that said: It doesnt matter what time it is. Think in months. Years. Someone loves you.
Where are you going? There are some things you will never do. It doesnt matter. There is
no rush. Be the best prisoner you can be."
Chris Huntington, Learning to Measure Time in Love and Loss
All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither,
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.
Tolkien
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
Allen Ginsberg
"I exist in two places,
here and where you are."
Margaret Atwood
"Im like that. Either I forget right away or I never forget."
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
I am happy to have held your hand on that day, when you were that exact person.
Chelsea Fagan
Day by day and night by night we were together,All else has long been
forgotten by me

Walt Whitman
I loved you on this day. I love this memory.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
I scarcely know where to begin, but love is always a safe place.
Emily Dickinson
Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine.
Casablanca
"How easy that must be. Easy to leave and then come back. You go. Youre missed. Time

works for you. Then you return, embellished by memory. Yes, that must be easy. But to
stay and live with someoneto share his everyday life, thats something else. You cant
do anything about that."
Nathalie to Garance, Children of Paradise
"You return when you feel like it, like rain. And like rain you are tender."
Linda Gregg, from Kept Burning and Distant
"Because yes, they must see this, these lights, the river- I love New York, even though it
isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway,
that belongs to me because I belong to it."
Truman Capote, Breakfast at Tiffanys
Astronomers report: for perhaps 2 billion
years, a black hole has been singing."
Kate Angus, from Theosophy
Listen: theres a hell of a good universe next door; lets go.
E E Cummings
"Im so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers."
L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
DEATH
Were all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each
other but it doesnt. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by
nothing.
Bukowski
"Even when Im dead, Ill swim through the Earth like a mermaid of the soil, just to be
next to your bones."
Jeffrey McDaniels
"I hope the exit is joyful and I hope never to return."
The last words of Frida Kahlo written in her diary
"I will come back as a little breeze. You will feel me on your face, and you will know that
I am still listening. So you can still talk to me."
Elizabeth Berg, Talk Before Sleep
Been walking my mind to an easy time, my back turned towards the sun. Lord knows
when the whole wind blows itll turn your head around. Well, there are hours of time on
the telephone line to talk about things to come. Sweet dreams and flying machines in
pieces on the ground. Oh, Ive seen fire and Ive seen rain. Seen sunny days that I
thought would never end. Ive seen lonely times when I could not find a friend, but I

always thought that Id see you again.

James Taylor
Would you be sad if I died?
If you died, Id forget what a tree was
Marlas philosophy of life was that she might die at any moment. The tragedy, she said,
was that she didnt.
LIFE
Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once
every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create
new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of
God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.
Paul Hawken
Ive learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three
things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.
Maya Angelou
I like it when somebody gets excited about something. Its nice.
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences.
Sylvia Plath
I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible
variety of life.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
"When Whitman wrote, I sing the body electric I know what he meant. I know what he
wanted: to be completely alive every moment in spite of the inevitable. We cant cheat
death but we can make it work so hard that when it does take us it will have known a
victory just as perfect as ours."
Charles Bukowski, A Song With No End
"In the end there doesnt have to be anyone who understands you. There just has to be
someone who wants to."
Robert Brault
The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is
indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept that challenges
of life within the boundaries of death however mutable man may be able to make them
our existence as a species can have genuine fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we
must supply our own light.

Stanley Kubrick
Life passes most people by while they are making grand plans for it.
and those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear
the music.
Nietzsche
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is
getting it.
Oscar Wilde
Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to
live.
Oscar Wilde
Screws fall out all the time. The worlds an imperfect place.
The Breakfast Club
You have to do everything you can and if you stay positive you have a shot at a silver
lining.
Silver Linings Playbook
Live, travel, adventure, bless, and dont be sorry.
Jack Kerouac
The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough.
Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin
They say that every snowflake is different. If that were true, how could the world go
on? How could we ever get up off our knees? How could we ever recover from the
wonder of it?
Jeanette Winterson
"I dont want to live. I want to love first, and live incidentally."
Zelda Fitzgerald
"When it all goes quiet behind my eyes, I see everything that made me flying around in
invisible pieces. When I look too hard, it goes away. And when it all goes quiet, I see they
are right here. I see that Im a little piece in a big, big universe. And that makes things
right."
Beasts of the Southern Wild
"My grandfather always said that living was like licking honey off a thorn."
Louis Adamic

"There is an urge to say: I was here, I felt this, and it matters!"

Alain de Botton
I beg you, please tell me about the perfect moments.'"
Jean-Paul Sartre- Nausea
"Maybe happiness is this: not feeling like you should be elsewhere, doing something else,
being someone else."
Isaac Asimov
"One hears it a lot on airplanes: Make sure you have your own mask on, before helping
others with theirs."
Daniel Handler [Lemony Snicket], upon being asked, "Whats your very best life
advice?