“There is lust and then there is love. They are related, but still very different things. To indulge in one requires little but honeyed speech and a change of clothes; to obtain the other, by contrast, a man must give up his rib. In return, his woman will undo the sin of Eve, and bring him back into Paradise.”
“Everything we say is a story. But nothing we say is just a story.”
“You were right and I was wrong. When life hurts more than death, it is not worth living.”
“I did not know my soul until I saw it's reflection in your eyes.”
“Great love, you believe, carries the seeds of great sorrow.”
“There is a trick to flying. The angels told me." He had smiled at my wide-eyed awe. "You need to forget everything you know as a human being. When you are human, you discover that there is great power in hating the earth. And it can almost make you fly. But it never will."
I had frowned, not quite understanding him. "So, what's the trick?"
"Love the sky.”
“Don't underestimate the power of events that happened a long time ago. That is the tragic flaw of modern man.”
“You owe me nothing, but I want everything.”
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said, “at nine o’clock. Don’t open your door to anyone else.”
“Not even my balcony door?”
“Especially not your balcony door.”
“Perhaps. But the firstborn of hope is tragedy.”
“.... "death turns all men into great lovers. Would that they were equally ardent while the lady was still alive!”
“She laughed out loud, a warm, knowing laughter that made me once again wonder about the secret ingredient in these women’s lives. Whatever it was, I was clearly missing it. It was so much more than just self-confidence; it seemed to be the ability to love oneself, enthusiastically and unsparingly, body and soul, naturally followed by the assumption that every man on the planet is dying to get in on the act.”
“Think about it. He drinks poison. What kind of man drinks poison? She is the one who stabs herself with his dagger. The manly way.”
“Was I insane? Maybe. But then, there were many different kinds of insanity. Aunt Rose had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples. Some have more, some have less, but only truly abnormal people have none at all. This commonsense philosophy had consoled me many times before, and it did now, too.”
“By the time we left college, I had become my own image: a dandelion in the flower bed of society. Kinda cute, but still a weed.”
“If you let go of me now,” I whispered, stretching against him, “it could be another six hundred years before you find me again. Are you willing to take that risk?”
“Peppo!" I yelled, pulling at my cousin's suspenders. "I really don't want to be arrested, okay?"
"Don't worry!" Peppo turned a corner and accelerated as he spoke. "I go too fast for police!”
“But he is an Italian," was Umberto's sensible reply. "He doesn't care if you break some law a little bit, as long as you wear beautiful shoes. Are you wearing beautiful shoes? Are you wearing the shoes I gave you?...principessa?"
I looked down at my flip-flops. "I guess I'm toast.”
“Great love, you believe, carries the seeds of great sorrow. Well, perhaps you are right. Perhaps the wise spurn one to remain safe from the other, but I should rather choose to have my eyes burnt in their sockets than to have been born without.”
“It's what we call a dolce pazzia... a sweet madness. Once you feel it, you will never want to leave it.”
“Romeo was cute …”
“Cute?” Alessandro rolled his eyes. “What kind of man is cute?”
“… and an excellent dancer …”
“Romeo had feet of lead! He said so himself!”
“… but most importantly,” I concluded, “he had nice hands!”
“I am sorry I didn’t tell you the truth before. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. You kept asking about Romeo and what he was really like. I was hoping that”—he smiled wistfully—“you would recognize me.”
“as a bird swoops down on it's prey, and assumes this land bound wretch into heaven, so did romeo steal her lips before they fled him again. suspended somewhere between cherubs and devils, his quarry ceased to buck, and he spread his wings wide and let the rising wind carry them off across the sky, until even the predator himself had lost every hope of returning home. within that one embrace, [he] became aware of a feeling of certainty he had not thought possible for anyone - even the virtuous. with her in his arms, all other women, past, present, and future, simply ceased to exist.”
“After the dress rehearsal that afternoon, someone had misplaced the vial of poison, and for lack of better, Romeo would have to commit suicide by eating Tic Tacs.”
“Look,' I said, struggling to keep up, 'I just wanna make one thing absolutely clear. I don't believe in guns. I just want peace. Okay?'
Alessandro stopped in the middle of the corridor, took out the gun, and wrapped my hand around it before I realized what he was doing. 'Can you feel that? That's a gun. It exists. And there are a lot of people out there who do believe in it. So, excused me for taking care of them so you can have your peace.”
“Everything has a shadow-side. In my opinion, that is what makes life interesting.”
“When the old men fight, the young people die.”
“...it is fifty percent what they see, and fifty percent what they think they see.”
“...and whether or not we had now paid our dues, he was my blessing, and I was his...”
“She had died peacefully, in her sleep, after an evening of listening to all of her favorite Fred Astaire songs, one crackling record after another. Once the last chord of the last piece had died out, she had stood up and opened the French doors to the garden outside, perhaps waiting to breathe in the honeysuckle one more time.”
“You have to start living your life for the future that you're alive for, not the past that you're willing to die for.”
“All of them, you slinthead shuck-faced piece of klunk." Minho smiled.”
“Write down what I think I know. The knowing will come.
Just keep listening...”
“To exchange all the goodness and grace of every life in Omelas for that single, small improvement: to throw away the happiness of thousands for the chance of the happiness of one: that would be to let guilt within the walls indeed.”
“Could he continue to maintain his sanity that long? He didn't know. That's why he was devouring two or three books a day - to remove himself every minute that he possibly could from the madness of this life.”
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