“I worried that I may never again feel as completely safe and at ease as I did making funny voices for a French bulldog with him by my side, but you can’t control how someone else feels.”— Tonya Malinowski, nytimes.com
“I still want to believe that two people can meet and like each other well enough to stay together exclusively, without the introduction of some 1960s rhetoric about free love or other noncommittal slogans.”— Marguerite Fields, nytimes.com
“Because, despite the fleeting nature of most of my encounters, and despite my own role in their short duration, I think what I have been seeking in some form from all of these men is permanence.”— Marguerite Fields, nytimes.com
“I tried to tell myself that I’m young, that this is the time to be casual, careless, lighthearted and fun; don’t ruin it.”— Marguerite Fields, nytimes.com
“OLD LOVE is different. In our 70s and 80s, we had been through enough of life’s ups and downs to know who we were, and we had learned to compromise.”— Eve Pell, nytimes.com
“I cannot regret that when I look at my husband I still feel the same quickening of desire that I felt 12 years ago when I saw him for the first time, standing in the lobby of my apartment building, a bouquet of purple irises in his hands.”— Ayelet Waldman, nytimes.com
“Did we find love because we grew up, got real and worked through our issues? No. We just found the right guys.”— Sara Eckel, nytimes.com
“To Mark, I was not a problem to solve, a puzzle that needed working out. I was the girl he was falling in love with, just as I was falling in love with him.”— Sara Eckel, nytimes.com
“She was one of the most beautiful, charming, brilliant and funny people I had ever met, but it didn’t occur to me, until that soul-searching moment in my garden, that we could perhaps choose to love each other romantically.”— Maria Bello, nytimes.com
“After all, you have a lot going for you if you’re willing to commit to learning the fox trot when you hate dancing, or giving up your cherished Saturday-morning run for a regular bedroom session of holding hands naked while staring into each other’s eyes (and seeing where that leads).”— Daniel Jones, nytimes.com
“I listened, rapt, as professional trainers explained how they taught dolphins to flip and elephants to paint. Eventually it hit me that the same techniques might work on that stubborn but lovable species, the American husband.”— Amy Sutherland, nytimes.com
“You can't expect a baboon to learn to flip on command in one session, just as you can't expect an American husband to begin regularly picking up his dirty socks by praising him once for picking up a single sock.”— Amy Sutherland, nytimes.com
“The truth feels like the biggest sucker-punch of them all: it’s not a spouse or land or a job or money that brings us happiness. Those achievements, those relationships, can enhance our happiness, yes, but happiness has to start from within.”— Laura A. Munson, nytimes.com
“Every day I say I cannot love him more, and every day I find more love in me for him.”— Anaïs Nin, amazon.com
“Romance isn't in my repertoire, Eva. But a thousand ways to make you come are. Let me show you.”— Sylvia Day, amazon.com
“Love. The reason I dislike that word is that it means too much for me, far more than you can understand.”— Leo Tolstoy, amazon.com
“There is nothing so mortifying as to fall in love with someone who does not share one's sentiments.”— Georgette Heyer, amazon.com
“Remember now and then that there is a man who would die to keep someone you love beside you”— Charles Dickens, amazon.com
“Ah, if everyone was as sensitive as you! There's no girl who hasn't gone through that. And it's all so unimportant!”— Leo Tolstoy, amazon.com