"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way."
— Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets/Cien Sonetos De Amor)

"where are the snowdens of yesteryear?"
— Joseph Heller (Catch-22)

"Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together."
— Nicole Krauss

"Even now, all possible feelings do not yet exist, there are still those that lie beyond our capacity and our imagination. From time to time, when a piece of music no one has ever written or a painting no one has ever painted, or something else impossible to predict, fathom or yet describe takes place, a new feeling enters the world. And then, for the millionth time in the history of feeling, the heart surges and absorbs the impact."
— Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)

"The truth is the thing I invented so I could live."
— Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)

"Loneliness: there is no organ that can take it all."
— Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)

"I tried to write about real things. I wanted to describe the world, because to live in an undescribed world was too lonely."
— Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)

"Then he almost but didn't say the two sentence he'd been meaning to say for years: part of me is made of glass, and also, I love you"
— Nicole Krauss

"It is the writer's privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart."
— William Faulkner

"Memory believes before knowing remembers."
— William Faulkner (Light in August)

"There is no was."
— William Faulkner

"...I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools."
— William Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury)

"How do our lives ravel out
into the no-wind, no-sound,
the weary gestures wearily recapitulant:
echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-string:
in sunset we fall into furious attitudes,
dead gestures of dolls."
— William Faulkner (As I Lay Dying)

"It flattered her, where she was most susceptible of flattery, to think how, wound about in their hearts, however long they lived she would be woven..."
— Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)

"About here, she thought, dabbling her fingers in the water, a ship had sunk, and she muttered, dreamily half asleep, how we perished, each alone."
— Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)

"A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how"."
— Viktor E. Frankl

"anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men (both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain"
— e.e. cummings (Selected Poems)

"nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

-excerpt of #35 from "100 Selected Poems"
— e.e. cummings

"i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart)i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)"
— e.e. cummings

"Lovers alone wear sunlight."
— e.e. cummings

"I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart) "
— e.e. cummings

"listen: there’s a hell
of a good universe next door; let’s go"
— e.e. cummings

"Many's the long night I've dreamed of cheese--toasted mostly."
— Robert Louis Stevenson

"I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world."
— Walt Whitman

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large -- I contain multitudes."
— Walt Whitman

"We were together. I forget the rest."
— Walt Whitman

"Pirates could happen to anyone."
— Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead)

"There must have been a moment, at the beginning, were we could have said -- no. But somehow we missed it. "
— Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead)

"What a fine persecution-to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened."
— Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.)

"Rosencrantz: I don't believe in it anyway.
Guildenstern: What?
Rosencrantz: England.
Guildenstern: Just a conspiracy of cartographers, then? "
— Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead)

"It would have been nice to have had unicorns."
— Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead)

"It's no trick loving somebody at their best. Love is loving them at their worst.
"
— Tom Stoppard

"Words are sacred. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones, in the right order, you can nudge the world a little."
— Tom Stoppard

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
— Martin Luther King Jr.

"I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear."
— Martin Luther King Jr.

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."
— Carl Gustav Jung

"Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible."
— Carl Gustav Jung

"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them."
— Henry David Thoreau (Civil Disobedience and Other Essays: Collected Essays of Henry David Thoreau)

"I have never found a companion that was so companionable as solitude."
— Henry David Thoreau

"Insanity is contagious."
— Joseph Heller (Catch-22)

"He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt."
— Joseph Heller (Catch-22)

"...[A]nything worth dying for ... is certainly worth living for."
— Joseph Heller (Catch-22)

"Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.

"
— Joseph Heller (Catch 22)

"There is no friend as loyal as a book."
— Ernest Hemingway

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
— Ernest Hemingway

"I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?"
— Ernest Hemingway

"Road to hell paved in unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault."
— Ernest Hemingway