“There is no clean way to enter
the heavy machinery of the heart.
Just jagged cutthroat questions.
Just the glitter and blood production.”

— Mindy Nettifee, ‘This is the Nonsense of Love’

“Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it.”

— James Baldwin, Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone

— Clarice Lispector, Agua Viva

“My robin song,
my springtime siren.
I’ll love you until I forget how to.
And then I’ll fall like my knees aren’t already bruised
from doing it,
and I’ll remember why you’re
worth the ache.”

— Yasmin Z. ( @heartcountry), “The honey hums to me”

“Years ago a friend of mine had a dream about a strange invention; a staircase you could descend deep underground, in which you heard recordings of all the things anyone had ever said about you, both good and bad. The catch was, you had to pass through all the worst things people had said before you could get to the highest compliments at the very bottom. There is no way I would ever make it more than two and a half steps down such a staircase, but I understand its terrible logic: if we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.”

— Tim Kreider, “I Know What You Think of Me”

— Benjamin Alire Saenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“What were we before we were we? We must’ve been standing by the shoulder of a dirt road while the city burned. We must’ve been disappearing, like we are now.
Maybe in the next life we’ll meet each other for the first time—believing in everything but the harm we’re capable of.“

— Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel

“We were inside the train car when I started to cry. You were crying too, /      smiling and crying in a way that made me / even more hysterical. You said I could have anything I wanted, but I  / just couldn’t say it out loud.Actually, you said Love, for you, / is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s / terrifying. No one  / will ever want to sleep with you.”

— Richard Siken, “Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out”

— Martyna Majok, The Cost of Living: A Play

“And no one can ever figure out what you want, / and you won’t tell them, and you realize the one person in this world who loves you  / isn’t the one you thought it would be, / and you don’t trust him to love you in a way / you would enjoy.”

— Richard Siken, “A Primer for the Small Weird Loves”

“We were arguing. You want love to be like this every day don’t you? 92 degrees even in the shade.”

— Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

— Jeff Buckley, “Hallelujah”

(”What about you? Are you the happiest and saddest right now that you’ve ever been?” “Of course I am.” “Why?” “Because nothing makes me sadder and nothing makes me happier than you.”)

— Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

“A heart’s a heavy burden”

— Diana Wynne Jones, Howl’s Moving Castle

“Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Manon, Ballerina

— William Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet

“…I love you and I do not want to love you, it is too much and too difficult…”

— Ingeborg Bachmann, letter to Paul Celan

“There are many in your life / And many still to be / Since you are a shining light / There’s many that you’ll see / But I have to deal with envy / When you choose  / the precious few / Who’ve left their pride on the other side of / Coming back to you.”

— Leonard Cohen, “Coming Back to You”

“To love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,you think, How can a body
withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.”

— Ellen Bass, ‘The Thing Is’

— Nick Cave, open letter to a grieving fan