Only Love Quotes

“I’ve learned something. The bravest thing you can do is trust another person, and let them see the real you.”
― Melanie Harlow, Only Love

“Then you come home and you can’t talk about shit, and you realize how against the war everyone is, how no one thinks we should be there, nobody thinks it’s worth the cost, and you’re like … fuck you all. You sent us there. People are dying for this. People are killing for this. Was it all just political bullshit and lies? I violated some of my deepest held beliefs for this war. Was it worth it?”
― Melanie Harlow, Only Love

“My God. How can people be so cruel and thoughtless? They should be thanking you for your service!” “That’s even worse! What the fuck do they think they’re thanking me for? They don’t know what I did over there! They don’t understand that I’ve got seconds to make a judgment call that will either save my guys or end someone’s life—and that someone could be an enemy combatant or it could be a civilian. A farmer. A woman. A child. Or it could be both! That’s the real fucked-up part of it. It could be both a child and the enemy. That kid you’ve been giving candy and comic books to? The one that brought you fresh bread and knows your name and taught you a few words in his language? Is he the one reporting your position? Did he pull the trigger wire on the IED that killed your friend and wounded every single guy in your squad? Has he been the enemy all along? Is it your fault for talking to him?” I was so shocked, I didn’t know what to say. Tears burned my eyes, and my chest ached as I raced along beside him. “Oh, Ryan, no. Of course it isn’t.” “It is. I should have known. I let them down.” “You didn’t,” I said, trying to touch his arm, but he shrugged me off, refusing to be comforted. “And how about the time Taliban fighters lined up women and children as shields behind a compound wall while they fired at you, only you didn’t realize what they’d done until after you’d fired back, killing dozens of innocents?” The tears dripped down my cheeks, but I silently wiped them away in the dark. This wasn’t about me, and I didn’t want him to stop if he needed to get these things out. “Or how about the farmer I killed that didn’t respond to warning shots, the one whose son later told us was deaf and mute? Should I be thanked for that?” I could see how furious and heartsick he was, and I hated that I’d brought this on. “Yes,” I said firmly, although I continued to cry. “Because you’re brave and strong and you did what you were trained to do, what you had to do.”
― Melanie Harlow, Only Love

“And I wasn’t the kind of woman who thought she could change a man. I’d never seen that kind of relationship play out successfully. Usually, she started to resent the fact that she was doing everything possible to turn him into her vision of what he should be, and he stubbornly refused to change because he didn’t want to be someone else. And he’d told her that from the start. No. I would not be that woman.”
― Melanie Harlow, Only Love

“You can’t even see me. It’s pitch dark in here.”
“I can see you. And you’ve never looked as beautiful to me as you do right now.”
― Melanie Harlow, Only Love

“I watched the candlelight play over her beautiful features and felt an ache deep in my chest. Regret that I couldn’t give her all she deserved. Anguish that soon she’d be out of my life, probably forever. And longing—fierce, uncontrollable longing to hold her in my arms and never let her go.”
― Melanie Harlow, Only Love

“I’ve never wanted anyone this much. I needed her. I needed her so badly it scared me. She made me want to dream again”
― Melanie Harlow, Only Love

“She had sweet dreams about me and believed I was a good man. She was the first woman in a long time that made me wish I were.”
― Melanie Harlow, Only Love

“You’re so beautiful, I can hardly breathe.”
― Melanie Harlow, Only Love

“As my humble lady garden began to tingle, I wondered what his royal spade was like.”
― Melanie Harlow, Only Love

“Never underestimate a granny on a mission.”
― Melanie Harlow, Only Love

“What Have We Done, by David Wood.”
― Melanie Harlow, Only Love

“That was her euphemism for death. Nobody died, they just went to Florida.”
― Melanie Harlow, Only Love

“You’re a man, Ryan, not a machine. But you had to perform like a machine during war, which you were carefully trained to do. Then you come home, and you’re expected to be a civilian again, but no one tells you how. No one tells you how to process all the grief and guilt and regret you’ve buried in order to do your job. They expect you to just ‘be a man’ and get on with it. That’s fucked up.”
― Melanie Harlow, Only Love

“You have to do things you know are wrong on a human level. Things that violate your strongest moral convictions, but you can’t stop to think about that. You can’t stop to feel. So you learn to … kill your feelings too, I guess.” She nodded. Pressed her lips to my shoulder. “Except …” Stop fucking talking, said a voice in my head. But I couldn’t. I fucking couldn’t. “You can’t just kill some feelings. Maybe you try, but it doesn’t work that way. You end up killing all of them.”
― Melanie Harlow, Only Love

“fall in love with a duke who’s pretending to be a peasant and let him plant his royal spade in the fertile soil of my humble lady garden all”
― Melanie Harlow, Only Love