Happy Valentine’s Day! (or, if you prefer, Happy Galentine’s Day.)
While this is hardly an original premise for a post, it’s one I never tire of. So without further ado (in no particular order), these are among my favorite literary quotes—from wonderful books I’ve read—about love.
“This was love: a string of coincidences that gathered significance and became miracles.”
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
“I felt that thread that had come between us, tugging, tugging at my heart – so hard, it hurt me. A hundred times I almost rose, almost went in to her; a hundred times I thought, Go to her! Why are you waiting? Go back to her side! But every time, I thought of what would happen if I did. I knew that I couldn’t lie beside her, without wanting to touch her. I couldn’t have felt her breath upon my mouth, without wanting to kiss her. And I couldn’t have kissed her, without wanting to save her.”
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope…I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you.”
Persuasion by Jane Austen
“People where you live, the little prince said, grow five thousand roses in one garden… Yet they don’t find what they’re looking for… And yet what they’re looking for could be found in a single rose.” The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“The way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke.”
The God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
“You and I, it’s as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.”
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
“She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.”
Beloved by Toni Morrison
“Each time you happen to me all over again.”
The Age Of Innocence by Edith Wharton
“Always”
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows by J.K. Rowling
“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.”
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
BONUS: This one is for you, John. Happy Valentine’s Day. I love you!
“And to that I hold. I would rather share one lifetime with you, than face all the ages of this world alone.”
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
Clare Favara, Author 