"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
— Maya Angelou

"Love me when I least deserve it, because that's when I really need it."
— Swedish proverb

"There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name."
— Jeanette Winterson (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit)

"I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had."
— Jeanette Winterson (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit)

"To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing -- the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. "
— Marilynne Robinson (Housekeeping: A Novel)