“The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too.”
– Ernest Hemingway
“here she is, all mine, trying her best to give me all she can. How could I ever hurt her? But I didn’t understand then. That I could hurt somebody so badly she would never recover. That a person can, just by living, damage another human being beyond repair.”
– Haruki Murakami
“The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving.”
– Elizabeth Gilbert
“Oh no. Don’t smile. You’ll kill me. I stop breathing when you smile.”
– Tessa Dare
“Hiding how you really feel and trying to make everyone happy doesn’t make you nice, it just makes you a liar.”
– Jenny O’Connell
“Don’t waste your love on somebody, who doesn’t value it.”
– William Shakespeare
“Lovers alone wear sunlight.”
– E.E. Cummings
“Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you–haunt me then. The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe–I know that ghosts have wandered the earth. Be with me always–take any form–drive me mad. Only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! It is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”
– Emily Brontë
“Usually adult males who are unable to make emotional connections with the women they choose to be intimate with are frozen in time, unable to allow themselves to love for fear that the loved one will abandon them. If the first woman they passionately loved, the mother, was not true to her bond of love, then how can they trust that their partner will be true to love. Often in their adult relationships these men act out again and again to test their partner’s love. While the rejected adolescent boy imagines that he can no longer receive his mother’s love because he is not worthy, as a grown man he may act out in ways that are unworthy and yet demand of the woman in his life that she offer him unconditional love. This testing does not heal the wound of the past, it merely reenacts it, for ultimately the woman will become weary of being tested and end the relationship, thus reenacting the abandonment. This drama confirms for many men that they cannot put their trust in love. They decide that it is better to put their faith in being powerful, in being dominant.”
– Bell Hooks
