Tag: Love

Quotes

Quotes from A Happy Death – Albert Camus

Geoff W

“Believe me, there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory…Everything is forgotten, even a great love. That’s what’s sad about life, and also what’s wonderful about it. There’s only a way of looking at things, a way that comes to you every once in a while. That’s why it’s good to have had love in your life after all, to have had an unhappy passion – it gives you an alibi for the vague despairs we all suffer from.’ After a pause, he added: ‘I don’t know if you understand what I mean.'” – 81

“You make the mistake of thinking you have to choose, that you have to do what you want, that there are conditions for happiness. What matters – all that matters, really – is the will to happiness, a kind of enormous, ever-present consciousness. The rest – women, art, success – is nothing but excuses. A canvas waiting for our embroideries.” – 91

Quotes

Quotes from The Line of Beauty – Alan Hollinghurst

Geoff W

“His confessed but entirely imaginary seductions took on – partly through the special effort required to invent them and repeat them consistently – the quality of real memories. He sometimes had the sense, from a hint of reserve in people he was talking to, that while they didn’t believe him they saw he was beginning to believe himself.” – 26

“He knew he was supposed to be able to tell; in fact he tended to think people were when they weren’t, and so lived with a recurrent sense of disappointment, at them and at his own inadequate sensors. He didn’t tell Catherine, but his uncertainty on the house tour had actually been the other way around. Had his own gayness somehow put Lord Kessler off and made him seem unreliable and lightweight in the old boy’s eyes? Had Lord Kessler even registered – in his clever, unimpressionable way – that Nick was gay?’ – 57

“He felt he floated forwards into another place, beautiful, speculative, even dangerous, a place created and held open by the music but separate from it. It had the mood of a troubling dream, where nothing could be known for certain or offer a solid foothold to memory after one had woken. What really was his understanding with Wani? The pursuit of love seemed to need the cultivation of indifference. The deep connection between them was so secret that at times it was hard to believe it existed. He wondered if anyone knew – had even a flicker of a guess, an intuition blinked away by its own absurdity. How could anyone tell? He felt there must always be hints of a secret affair, some involuntary tenderness or respect, a particular way of not noticing each other…He wondered if it ever would be known, or if they would take the secret to the grave. For a minute he felt unable to move, as if he were hypnotized by Wani’s image. It took a little shudder to break the charm.” – 240-241

“The photographer was at large, and his flash gleamed in the mirrors. He slipped and lingered among the guests, approached with a smile, like a vaguely remembered bore, in his bow tie and dinner jacket, and then pouf! – he’d got them. Later he came back, he came around, because most shots catch a bleary blink or a turned shoulder, and got them again. Now they bunched and faced him, or they pretended they hadn’t seen him and acted themselves with careless magnificence. Nick dropped onto the sofa beside Catherine, lounged with one leg curled under him and a grin on his face at his own elegance. He felt he could act himself all night. He felt fabulous, he loved these nights, and whilst it would have been good to top the thing off with sex, it seemed hardly to matter if he didn’t. It made the absolute best of not having sex.” – 379

Quotes

Quotes from A Midsummer Night’s Dream – William Shakespeare

Geoff W

“Love can transpose to form and dignity.
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.”

– Act I, Scene I

“What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?
I pray the gentle mortal sing again.
Mine ear is much enamour’d of thy note;
So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape;
And thy fair virtue’s force, perforce, doth move me,
On the first view, to say, to swear, I love thee.”

– Act III, Scene I

Quotes

Quote from Angels in America – Tony Kushner

Geoff W

“I’m flayed – no past now. I could give up anything…I want to live now. I can be anything I need to be and I want to be with you.”

Quotes

Quote from the Ballad of the Sad Cafe – Carson McCullers

Geoff W
“But what sort of thing is love? First of all, it is a joint experience between two persons, but that fact does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only the stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness.
Now, the beloved can also be of any description: the most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else–but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. Therefore, the quality and value of any love is determined solely by the lover himself. 

But though the outward facts of love are often sad and ridiculous, it must be remembered that no one can know what really takes place in the soul of the lover himself. So, who but God can be the final judge of any love? But one thing can be said about these three people–all of whom, Miss Amelia, Cousin Lymon and Marvin Macy, all of whom were subject to the condition of love. The thing that can be said is this: No good will come of it.”