Life

... life's for living ...
so if you get the chance,
you better take it.

Even eighty years
goes by fast.

— Janice Daugharty, "Name of Love"
(short story included in "New Stories from the South")

Romance

There is no beginning
to love.
It just
creeps over you.

— Bailey White, "Quite a Year for Plums"

Romance

When a man's passion
explodes into violence,
only a woman's desire
can turn it into love.
— Tagline on the cover of the novel "Tender Is the Storm" by Johanna Lindsey

Ice

The icicle
became
a snowflake,
just as it
always did
with that
Mouse's
meanest
gestures.

She thought,
He loves me.
She tried
to say it.
She couldn't.
The snowflake
melted

and left
nothing
in her heart
but a puddle
of confusion.

— Jay Cantor, "Krazy Kat"

Opening

Accidents
ambush
the unsuspecting,
often violently,
just like love.
-- Andrew Davidson, "The Gargoyle"

Love

For the first time,
her love for Edward
was associated with a definable
physical sensation, as irrefutable as vertigo.
Before, she had known only
a comforting broth of warm emotions,
a thick winter blanket of kindness and trust.

That had always seemed enough,
an achievement in itself.

Now here at last
were the beginnings of desire,
precise and alien, but clearly her own;
and beyond, as though suspended
above and behind her, just out of sight,
was relief that she was just like everyone else.
-- Ian McEwan, "On Chesil Beach"

Unloved

A minute later
she asked me
if I loved her.
I told her
it didn't mean
anything but that
I didn't think so.
-- Albert Camus, "The Stranger"
(trans. Matthew Ward)

Women

Nothing would have surprised him,
because he knew that women are just like men
in their secret adventures:
the same strategems,
the same sudden inspirations,
the same betrayals without remorse.
-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "Love in the Time of Cholera"

Lovelife

She was forced to consider
the startling fact
that the love of her life
might not actually be someone
with whom she could spend a lifetime.
-- Jodi Picoult, "The Tenth Circle"

Love

Seconds pass and love for him grows suddenly,
like ice crystals or sea monkeys, all over my body.
-- Alissa Nutting, "Hot, Fast, and Sad"
(Tin House, Fall 2007)