“It was words that I fell for. In the end, it was words that broke my heart.”
“Patience
Patience and Love agreed to meet at a set time and place; beneath the twenty-third tree in the olive orchard. Patience arrived promptly and waited. She checked her watch every so often but still, there was no sign of Love.
Was it the twenty-third tree or the fifty-sixth? She wondered and decided to check, just in case. As she made her way over to the fifty-sixth tree, Love arrived at twenty-three, where Patience was noticeably absent.
Love waited and waited before deciding he must have the wrong tree and perhaps it was another where they were supposed to meet.
Meanwhile, Patience had arrived at the fifty-sixth tree, where Love was still nowhere to be seen.
Both begin to drift aimlessly around the olive orchard, almost meeting but never do.
Finally, Patience, who was feeling lost and resigned, found herself beneath the same tree where she began. She stood there for barely a minute when there was a tap on her shoulder.
It was Love.
..................................
“Where are you?” She asked. “I have been searching all my life.” “Stop looking for me,” Love replied, “and I will find you.”
“I just hope you realize how much you mean to me. I just wish I could remind you of how beautiful you are. I’m sorry I haven’t told you in so long. But please don’t think I have given up on you. I will never give up on you. My arms are wide open. There is always a place for you here.”
“Then there is the boy you can never stop thinking about. Whenever you see his name, it trips you up. Even if it’s one that belongs to many others, even if he belongs to someone else.”
“She was the book that was not written. The sentence that was not scripted. She was the word you wished you could have said.”
“I have always thought of memories as fragments, like colored glass shards in a kaleidoscope. It is the source of great beauty in our lives, yet the cause of such heartache.”
“It seems an age ago, since you have left me, time has filled me, with words unsaid;
as the sadness seeps into me slowly, and I am left to face the night ahead.”
“I want you to know how happy you once made me and though you really did hurt me, in the end, I was better for it. I don't know if what we had was love, but if it wasn't, I hope never to fall in love. Because of you, I know I am too fragile to bear it.”
“One day you meet someone and for some inexplicable reason, you feel more connected to this stranger than anyone else.”
“Love, he has abandoned me,
do with me as you will.
Love, he left - unceremoniously,
why must I love him still?
The best of me I gave to him -
the years, the days, the hours.
Precious little, in turn he'd given,
like dew to a wilting flower.
Love, he sheared away tenderly,
my beauty, my strength, my mind,
the gifts that were bestowed to me -
were swallowed in his pride.
Love, has he forgotten me?
Please tell me what you've heard,
I guard his memory jealously -
with him I'd place my worth.”
“...it wasn't my choice to love you but it was mine to leave”
“It was the year you learned that shooting stars were either a blessing or a curse, depending on what you wanted to believe.”
“Have you ever loved a rose, and bled against her thorns; and swear each night to let her go, then love her more by dawn.”
“There's a particular kind of suffering to be experienced when you love something greater than yourself. A tender sacrifice.”
“The time may not be prime for us, though you are a special person. We may be just two different clocks, that do not tock, in unison.
”
“Reaching Out
I have given so much to things that weren't worth my time. When all along, it's the people I love that I should have carried. It's the ones I cared for whom I should have been responsible.
But maybe I'm too late. Because I don't know how to talk to you. I don't know how to ask you if you're okay. I don't know how to tell you I am so afraid of losing you. How much light would leave my life if you were no longer part of it.
I just hope you realize how much you mean to me. I just wish I could remind you of how beautiful you are. I'm sorry I haven't told you in so long. But please don't think I have given up on you. I will never give up on you. My arms are wide open. There is always a place for you here.”
“Give me something I can write about.”
“A Way Out
Do you know what it is like to lie in bed awake;
with thoughts to haunt you every night, of all your past mistakes.
Knowing sleep will set it right - if you were not to wake.”
“I saw love in your smile and I recognized it for the first time in my life. But you had a plane to catch and I was already home.”
“I want you to be happy. I want someone else to know the warmth of your smile, to feel the way I did when I was in your presence.”
“I used to think I couldn't go a day without your smile. Without telling you things and hearing your voice back.
Then, that day arrived and it was so damn hard but the next was harder. I knew with a sinking feeling it was going to get worse, and I wasn't going to be okay for a very long time.
Because losing someone isn't an occasion or an event. It doesn't just happen once. It happens over and over again. I lose you every time I pick up your favorite coffee mug; whenever that one song plays on the radio, or when I discover your old t-shirt at the bottom of my laundry pile.
I lose you every time I think of kissing you, holding you, or wanting you. I go to bed at night and lose you, when I wish could tell you about my day. And in the morning, when I wake and reach for the empty space across the sheets, begin to lose you all over again.”
“It was a question I had worn on my lips for days—like a loose thread on my favorite sweater I couldn’t resist pulling—despite knowing it could all unravel around me. “Do you love me?” I ask. In your hesitation I found my answer.
”
“Finally, I want you to know how sorry I am for pushing you away when I had only meant to bring you closer. And If I ever felt like home to you, it was because you were safe with me. I want you to know that most of all.”
“Isn't it strange how much of our lives are interchangeable, how little is truly ours.”
“I know you’ve lost someone and it hurts. You may have lost them suddenly, unexpectedly. Or perhaps you began losing pieces of them until one day, there was nothing left. You may have known them all your life or you may have barely known them at all. Either way, it is irrelevant — you cannot control the depth of a wound another soul inflicts upon you.
Which is why I am not here to tell you tomorrow is another day. That the sun will go on shining. Or there are plenty of fish in the sea. What I will tell you is this; it’s okay to be hurting as much as you are. What you are feeling is not only completely valid but necessary — because it makes you so much more human. And though I can’t promise it will get better any time soon, I can tell you that it will — eventually. For now, all you can do is take your time. Take all the time you need.”
“I want you to remember my lips beneath your fingers and how you told me things you never told another soul. I want you to know that I have kept sacred, everything you had entrusted in me and I always will.”
“...and swear each night to let her go, then love more by dawn.”
“You said my sadness was like the sun, beautiful from a distance but it hurt you too much to come closer.”
“I know how hard it is to have to love someone in secret.”
“I wish I could put a pen in your hand and gently remind you how the world has given you poetry and now you must give it back.”
“We know what it feels like to have our energy drained by too much interaction. It feels like my brain is tired, almost like a muscle would be tired. The more depleted my psychic energy is, the slower my thoughts come, the harder it is to speak full sentences or focus on what’s going on around me. My senses become even more sensitive; noise and fuss are more overwhelming. And I become tense, irritated, cranky. That’s when I know I need to stop, sit down, let my brain relax and put up its metaphorical feet.”
“Because I don’t really want to fall in love. Nathan is safe because he’s unattainable.”
“This coffee looks, like, totally amazing and delicious, but I really want to kiss you. And for that I need two hands because I’m going to have to hold you up. That’s how hard I’m going to kiss you.”
“there is no necessary dilution of reality in representation; quite the opposite, if the representation has power. Reality is conferred, re-conferred, by every original representation.”
“Oh, the accident necessary to fiction!”
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.