Orson Scott Card Quotes on Love
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Isn't it possible, he wondered, for one person to love another without trying to own each other? Or is that buried so deep in our genes that we can never get it out? Territoriality. My wife. My friend. My lover. My outrageous and annoying computer personality who's about to be shut off at the behest of a half- crazy girl with OCD on a planet that I never heard of and how will I live without [her] when she's gone?
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I wanted to hurry because I have a work to do there, and every day here is marking time, and because it hurts me every time I see you and [he] growing closer and you and me growing more distant, even though I know it's exactly as it should be, so when I decided to go, I thought that going quickly was better, and I was right; you know I'm right. I never thought you'd hate me for it I don't hate you, I love you, you're part of myself, you're my heart and when you go it's my heart torn out and carried away
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I never thought id lose you again But I knew we had lost each other on the day you first loved [him]. Then you should have told me! I wouldn't have done it That's why I didn't tell you. But it isn't true ... You would have done it anyway. And I wanted you to. You've never been happier.
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For he loved her, as you can only love someone who is an echo of yourself at your time of deepest sorrow.
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I think you can't possibly know the truth about somebody unless you love them.
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I knew her so well that I loved her, or maybe I loved her so well that I knew her.
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I carry the seeds of death with me and plant them wherever I linger long enough to love. My parents died so others could live; now I live, so others must die.
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If you asked me to marry you all over again today, I'd say yes. And if I'd only met you for the first time today, I'd ask. They had said the same words many, many times before. Yet they still smiled to hear them, because they were still true.
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I just don't what to face her again. Because I love her and I fear her. Because I'm not sure whether I should help her or try to destroy her.
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Is it possible she had lost her soul inside his?
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You don't love him, you don't know how to love people. You only know how to own them. And because people will never act just like you want them too... You'll always feel betrayed. And because everybody dies, you'll always feel cheated. But you're the cheat... You're the one who uses our love for you to try to control us.
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It's the worst thing you'll ever do in your life, helping the people you love to something that in your heart you know is deeply wrong.
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'This emotion I'm feeling now, this is love, right?' 'I don't know. Is it a longing? Is it a giddy stupid happiness just because you're with me?' 'Yes,' she said. 'That's influenza,' said Miro. 'Watch for nausea or diarrhea within a few hours.'
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Doesn't it make you wonder about your own sexual identity, not to mention your sanity, that the two women you love are, respectively, a virtual woman existing only in the transient ansible connections between computers and a woman whose soul is in fact that of a man who is the husband of your mother?
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Religion is tied to the deepest feelings people have. The love that arises from that stewing pot is the sweetest and strongest, but the hate is the hottest, and the anger is the most violent.
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They would not meet, but they would pass close to each other. She would notice him or not. He would speak to her or not. She still loved and needed him. Or not.
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But he did love her, with all his heart he loved her. All his heart? All of it he knew about.
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There's no meaning of life if I've lost you.
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I'm not interested in my own life anymore. Do you understand? The only life I care about in the world is yours. If I lose you, what is there to hold me here?
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Obstacles? Men like you don't have obstacles. Just steppingstones. Men like me? Yes, men like you. Just because I've never met any others. Just because no matter how much I loved [him] he was never for one day as alive as you are every minute. Just because I found myself loving as an adult for the first time when I loved you. Just because I have missed you more than I miss even my children, even my parents, even the lost loves of my life. Just because I can't dream of anyone but you, that doesn't mean that there isn't somebody else just like you somewhere else. The universe is a big place. You can't be all that special. Can you? You do still love me, then? Oh, is that what you came for? To find out if I loved you? Partly I do.
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Brilliant young people who were nevertheless silly with love-or youth, as if it made a difference.
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You imagine that I love you, but I do not. I don't love anyone.
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Love was the genes of all creatures demanding that they be replicated, replicated, replicated.
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When did I first start wanting him to love me?
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I have a sense of comfortableness in love; it isn't grand sweeping passions that I expected to feel.
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Will the love I have for you be enough....? To reach out to you when I'm in need, and to try to be here for you when you need me back. And to feel such tenderness when I look at you that I want to stand between you and all the world: and yet also lift you up and carry you above the strong currents of life; and at the same time, I would be glad to stand always like this, at a distance watching you, the beauty of you, your energy as you look up at these [people], speaking to them as an equal even though every movement of your hands, every fluttering syllable of your speech cries out that you're a child - is it enough for you that I feel these loves for you? Because it's enough for me. And enough for me that when my hand touched your shoulder, you leaned on me; and when you felt me slip away, you called my name.
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She wants what everybody wants - to be loved and cared for, to be part of something beautiful and fine, to have the respect of those she admires.
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Would I tame this great being and make her so much my slave that every moment of her time belongs to me? Would I focus her eyes so they can see nothing but my face? I should rejoice that I am part of her, instead of resenting I'm not more of her.
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These other kids didn't know love when they saw it.
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Petra,' said Rackham, 'don't you understand that we love you children? All of you? We already had to send Ender away. We're sending them all away, except for you. Because we love you. Because we don't want any harm to you.
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'I'm not in love with [her] because she's the most beautiful young woman [here] and therefore quite possibly in the entire world. I'm in love with her because we can talk together, because of the way she thinks, the sound of her voice, the way she cocks her head to listen to an idea that she doesn't agree with, the way she rests her hand on mine when she's trying to persuade me.
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If she had the power to make him cry because of his love for her, then there was only one possible solution for him: cease loving her. This was the last time she would ever be able to do this to him.
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There's nothing between them anymore. I could see it fall, the last tie of love or even of concern. If he died tonight, she would be content. to Luet this seemed the most terrible of tragedies. Once these two had been joined together in love, or something like love... And yet the last tie between them was broken now. All lost, all gone. Nothing lasted, nothing.
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Permanence was always an illusion, and love was just the disguise that lovers wore to hide the death of their union from each other for a while.
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Is that who I am? A boy who is so weak that he can't imagine loving a woman who is strong?
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This is love. This is the kind of love that songs and stories are made of.
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Has life left you so hungry that you'll swallow even the poor imitation of love?
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That was all she needed - was for him to tell her he didn't expect her to be the waterseer all the time, that he was marrying the fragile, imperfect human being, and not the overpowering image she inadvertently put on.
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Love and respect have nothing to do with controlling what other people do
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Show him who I am, help him to see that even though I am no beauty, I'm still a woman, I still long to love, to be loved, to make a family with a man who is bound into my heart
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Show him who I am, so he will pity me instead of fearing me. And then we can turn pity into compassion, and compassion into understanding, and understanding into affection, and affection into love, and love into life, the life of our children, the life of the new self we will become together
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Doesn't love show it's face when it satisfies the need of the loved one, for the loved one's sake alone?
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Any unhappiness that they might harbor in their hearts was kept in check, buried under the hard work that marked the rhythms of their lives, and then dissolved in the moments when joy was bountiful and love unstinted
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She of all people should have known that it was his desire to be a hero that impelled him now, it was his passion to find out what would happen next, to make the next thing happen. She, if she loved him, should have understood
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Let there be no barrier between us... My love. I never want to be alone again
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You're the only one that I would be glad to be close to forever, because all your secrets are bright and good and I love you for them
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I don't think what they made between them was what you or I would understand as friendship
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Don't you know... That I love you? Don't you know that I don't want to live without you?
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I don't mind dying before you do. In fact, I rather prefer it that way
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Why don't you say what you're thinking? What makes you think you want to hear it? Because the way you looked at me... I knew what you were thinking was, I love her, I want her beside me forever, I want her to be my wife, and ... I tell you honestly, I'm sick and tired of waiting for you to say it outloud What! Why should I tell you what you already know? Because I need to hear it
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For 2 people to love each other, they have to meet, don't they? And 2 people who live in utterly different worlds have no chance of meeting
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That kiss and all it held - hope, forgiveness, love - let me never forget that
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Perhaps all that some men need from a woman is for her to be loving and wise and careful, like a field of flowers where he can play the butterfly, drawing sweetness from her blossoms
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So why do you intend to inflict your wisdom on this poor unfortunate man you say you love? Because some men are great enough that they can love a whole woman, and not just part of her
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Alvin saw how measure was with Delphi. She wasn't a noticeably pretty girl, though not particular ugly either; she was strong and stout and laughed loud as a donkey. But Alvin saw how measure had a way of looking at her like the most beautiful sight he ever could see. She'd look up and there he'd be, watching her with a kind of dreamy smile on his face, and shed laugh or blush or look away, but for a minute or two she'd move more graceful, walking partly on her toes maybe, like she was dancing, or getting set to fly. Alvin wondered then if he could ever give such a look to Miss. Larner as would make her so full of joy that she couldn't hardly stay connected to the earth
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Who is she? Who? The one you love till it takes your breath away just remembering
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Somewhere there was a woman he could love and live with till he died
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You're not losing me, mother. I'm in love. I never had you, not since you escaped from the womb
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Women always said things like that, and it made him crazy. It's as if every conversation with a woman was a test, and men always failed it, because they always lacked the key to the code and so they never quite understood what the conversation was really about. If, just once, the man could understand, really comprehend the whole of the conversation, then the perfect union between male and female would be possible. But instead men and women continued to cohabit, even to love each other, without ever quite crossing over the chasm of misunderstanding between them
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Living with a god is not what it's cracked up to be. They think their women should be grateful just to have them around
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He was not happy. And, if Ivan was any judge of character, neither was Katerina. Relieved, yes, she seemed to be relieved. As if one great hurdle had been passed. But Ivan knew that this was nothing to her but a marriage for reasons of the state. She had grown up knowing such a thing would be needed. He had not. He always expected to marry for love, or at least by his own choice. He had hoped for a bride who would be proud to say the vows with him. This was dismal indeed, to know that she was merely doing her duty to king and country, to god and daddy
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Don't hurt each other any more, children How could I hurt her? She'd have to love me before I could do that
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Don't you love her? This beauty, this bright and powerful woman?
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But charm, intelligence, and good looks, did they add up to love?
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He was close to her hour after hour, the smell of her, the touch of her breath on the hairs of his arms or on his ears as she leaned over his shoulder to watch. He thought sometimes he might go insane with desire for her; but he could not think of a way to change what lay between them, and though he thought she liked him well enough now, he still didn't know if their friendship was yet the thing a marriage should be made of. Do you love me? He wanted to ask her, to demand of her. But fearing the answer would be a wan 'I'm sorry, Ivan,' he did not speak
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I trust you because I've come to know you, and coming to know you, I've learned to love you. I've fallen in love with your boldness, your humility, your innocence, your kindness, your willingness. I know that you will stand by me as best you can. But you don't know what my husband needs to know. You can't do what my husband needs to do. I can trust your heart, your king's heart, but your mind doesn't know what it needs to know, your hands don't have in them the skills they need to have. I had no choice but to marry you. But little by little I have come to long for you to include me within the circle of your arms, of your mind, of your pure love. To embrace me, to give me babies I was born to have, to help me raise them. And I don't care which world we raise them in, yours or mine or some other we haven't seen yet
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As long as no one said anything, he could pretend that it was love. That she felt about him as he felt about her
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Your mother surrounds you every moment,' she said. 'I know, because I feel her love for you in my own arms, around you now.
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They say that love conquers all. They say that because they're idiots. Love can't conquer anything. Love can't make a scholar into a warrior. Loving her can't make her love me.
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Even in cultures where marriages are arranged by parents, you're never actually forbidden to fall in love with your mate.
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Do you begrudge her this: that once in her life she had a man who loved her with his whole heart, if only for that moment?
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It was then that [he] first loved [her]. Not for her flesh - [he] had known the body of the queen. Not out of pity - he knew her too well to see her from the distance that pity requires. He loved her because he admired her. For bearing without complaint the burden the queen put on her. For still being gentle and loving when she had ample reason to be bitter: does that surprise you? That of all people, your son could look at [her] and see beauty?
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What [he] felt for her was genuine, and not just for love of her perfect flesh. I know [him] truly, and I know that when he loved his bride it was not a queen he loved, but rather the girl as she might have been if she had not been destroyed in her childhood
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Still the girl had found her lover - a dreamer, a good man, a kind man who cared less for his plan than for the people in it. That is how he was unlike you, and that was why she loved him
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Poor beauty. May I not pity her, of all people? She loved him, but she had only learned one way to show her love - through cruelty and abuse
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That was what she knew of love. No wonder [he] never recognized her love when she gave it to him. Even now, if he knew that she had loved him, it would break his heart
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[He] did not understand it, and I did not tell him then, but you know, don't you? She began to love him then. And part of why she loved him was because he looked like you. Does it make you laugh?
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He'd suppose she was looking at him with hurt and longing, that sort of dreamy-eyed look that he remembered very well from high school, the look that girls eventually realized they probably shouldn't use with guys unless they really meant something it, because it had the power to make them hover but then they were pretty hard to get rid of
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The kind of man that's the one kind worth loving, when I tell him that story, he'll never be able to love me
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He'll remember me. And I'll feel it. I'll know that I was known, that I am known. That someone holds me in his heart
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Step hated feeling such rage toward the person he loved most. And it wasn't the yearning love of young romance, but rather the kind of love that made her feel like part of his own self, so that he couldn't imagine a future without her beside him. To be so savagely angry at her was terrible
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My life is still good because you're in it. Everything good in my life comes from you. Step shook his head. He knew she meant it, but in fact he knew that it wasn't true. Even the goof she found in him was really the goodness she had put in him, the goodness he had put on himself as a disguise in order to get her to marry him. He had known that she could only be happy with a husband who was good in certain distinct ways.... She never realized that it was a sacrifice he was making out of love for her, in order to be part of her. She thought it was his own desire, and she loved him for it. But what she was really loving was herself, reflected back at her
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This is what love is, he thought. Doing what you don't want to do, because she needs it so much. And it isn't that bad. And it isn't that hard
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[Her] love for the girls was real, and they had always adored this strange creature who had no children to love but them
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It was nice to be reminded that she was looking out for me almost as certainly as I always looked out for her
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It was from her that I drew my identity, it was around her that I built my hopes, it was in her that I had my life.... She was deeply good, brilliant of mind and generous of heart, and she loved me. Our bond was stronger than blood, than religion, than language, than marriage. It was the bond of self-hood. I saw the world through her eyes, and she through mine. We - almost - were the same person
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I knew [her] better than any living soul. Better than she knew herself. So I knew right then, long before she understood it herself, that she was in love with [him]
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She did love him, you know... It was a selfish, possessive love, but it was all she knew how to give
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To him, their marriage was his very soul. To [her], their marriage was just a friendship with sex.
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Her soul belong as much to [them] as to him. By dividing her loyalties, she fragmented them; none were strong enough to sway her deepest desires. Thus he discovered what he supposed all faithful men eventually discover - that no human relationship is ever anything but tentative. There is no such thing as an unbreakable bond between people.
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It's all right to love him I know that I mean, it's all right to love him more than you love us. More than you love any of us. More than you love all of us
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He lived in one frozen, perfect moment - the moment when his heart was so full of love - no, not love. The moment when he decided, without love, that it would be better for his life, such as it was, to end than to have to watch [her] life end. It's is a moment that can be lived with for eternity
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The combination was irresistible even if he hadn't loved her desperately. (more than she loves me, he sometimes admitted to himself.) He did love her desperately, however, and while this did not mean that he utterly lost his own will, it did mean that he would go along with her, for a while at least, in almost anything. Even if she was a damned fool sometimes 'You're a damned fool sometimes I love you too'
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She could never have been the woman of his dreams; there were times when he suspected she had once loved another man, too, that was as lost to her as both his Beatrice's were to him. Diko had been his teacher, his partner, his lover, his companion, the mother of many children, his true queen when they had shaped a great kingdom out of a thousand villages on fifty islands and two continents. He loved her. He was grateful to her. She had been a gift of god to him
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Love is random; fear is inevitable.
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Matthew did not measure her bosom or her buttocks with his gaze. Rather he worshiped. But adoration - that laid upon her an obligation she did not know how to pay. At least, not in any coin she was willing to offer him
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Afraid because his eyes still looked at her and said, mine, and because somewhere in her was something that answered, impossibly, yours
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I hate you for knowing my heart and using it against me
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That when Bant left it was the end of the world for Josif, because when he attached to somebody he didn't know how to let go
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Kyaren, I don't want to leave you Then don't It's because I love you that I want to leave If you love me, you'll stay' he had known it, from the moment she appeared in the door. He couldn't leave her. When the change came, it would come, and then it would be irreversible, and then he would leave because he loved someone else and there was something in him that made it impossible for him to love 2 people at once. But not the one person was Kyaren, and he could not leave her because she wanted him to stay. 'Ill hurt you You could not hurt me worse than leaving me now, for no reason
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She thinks it's all better now, Josif thought bitterly. She thinks she's kept me. She would have kept me better if she had let me go now.
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Now I will never let go of you in my heart, Josif thought. I will love you forever, he thought. I am lying, he thought, and this time he was right
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Josif told me. That he thought he was going to fall in love with you. Did you mind? Why should I mind? There's plenty of love, what should I care? I love both you and him, you know, and you love both of us, but he kept talking as if it were something that could only - as if once he loved you, he would have to stop loving me. He said that. He said that if he ever made love to you it would be. It would be what? It would be after he stopped loving me
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I was sad to see you go Anywhere. To anyone. I was yours, is that it? I had to love you most, is that it? If I thought of the songhouse as home, you couldn't bear that, could you? If I love the songhouse more than I loved this palace, then you'd take away the songhouse from me, wouldn't you? Only you had to twist it, so I'd hate them in the process, and not you at all. You couldn't have me hate you. I wanted your songs You wanted my songs more than you wanted my happiness. So you took my happiness, and stole my songs.
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I want Josif. Now No Aren't you through? Do you think you can still save something? Or are you determined that if you can't have my love, and you can't, Riktors, you can't - then no one can. If you ever loved me, Riktors, you will let me have Josif. Now
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You know that you still love him No Ansset, your love was never slight. You gave without bar, and received without caution, and just because it brought pain doesn't mean that it is gone
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She needed his gentle hands and quiet tears, his lies and his affection. And so she pretended to believe that he really did need her
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[He] then discovered what he had not known about himself. That when he trusted, he held nothing back. That when he loved, he could not love anyone else
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Stop talking and kiss her, Moses With all due respect, Jethro, that's not for you to decide Stop talking and kiss me Now you, you get a vote
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She never touched me, at least not as she had before, not with the promise of decades of passion in out future. She knew, but I did not yet know
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Savanna had said, 'Come back soon. Come back while you're still young enough to want me. For I'm going to be young forever' I wasn't young anymore, not by any definition of the word. But I wanted her. Perhaps I only wanted the innocence of the children we had been, making love beside the river, oblivious to the pain that could and surely would come to them. Still, I wanted her more than I wanted anyone else in the world, not because my passion was so overwhelming, but because all the other things I wanted were either painfully accomplished or so hopeless that I had given up on them. Only she was left
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[He] wanted to die. Not die too, because he wasn't going to think of [her] dying to especially of her already being dead. No, he wanted to die instead. A swap, a trade. Oh god, let me die instead. Put me on this bed and let her go on home... Let it be me they give up on. Let it be my plug they pull. Not [hers]
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[He] didn't know what he wanted, but he did know what he didn't want. What he didn't want was any of the girls at school. He had lots of friends who were girls. He liked them. Nice girls. Just not for him.
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The one thing I can't have in all this world is [her]. But she's what I've wanted, all day, all month, all these years
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Power was my dream. You're real
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With [her] in his life [he] was beginning to realize how deeply unhappy he had been all these years. It took such small things, just her smile, her hand resting on his, and he would get this glow inside and he'd find himself wearing this goofy grin and nodding at everything she said and he'd realize: this is pretty good! This is what other people have known about all these years and tried to tell me!
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I'm very happy for you... True love is rare
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That's what I love most about you... You have no ambition what so ever
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He felt something touch him, warm and deep, like a candle burst inside his heart. Like a soft breath of joy that swept through him, and he looked up to ask her what it was she did to him, how she could give him such a gift of life. But she was gone.
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Young love is so hard
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I've been loving a lie
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I am the truth. I am the deepest truth in the most secret places of your heart. I am all your dreams come true.
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The ways of love are strange and hard: the love you want is always barred; the love you have you want to change. The ways of love are hard and strange
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Dangerous people... As dangerous when they loved you as they were when they hated you. That is, if you ever really loved anybody, instead of just using them
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A man who has loved the perfect lover isn't likely to find a substitute very soon
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I wasn't crazy to love her was I? ...we're all crazy to love anybody. But it drives us even crazier if we don't
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I'm so much like you that to love me is purest narcissism
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It's what isn't me in you that I most love. Where I have torn down, you will build up. I have made chaos for you, and the world is without form, and void. You are the light that will shine on the face of the deep
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My strongest memories are yours
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I never knew I love father till he lay there at the brink of death. Perhaps I never did love him, until he was nearly gone. It seemed a very powerful thought, until it occurred to him that justice probably put it into his mind
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Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to be controlled by good people, by people who love you. (Ender's Game) Valentine to Ender
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But you tell me that you loved her, though she was an adulteress. Isn't she the same person tonight? Has she changed between yesterday and today? Or is it only you who have changed?
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This emotion I'm feeling now, this is love, right?
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Doesn't it make you wonder about your own sexual identity, not to mention your sanity, that the two women you love are, respectively, a virtual woman existing only in the transient ansible connections between computers and a woman whose soul is in fact that of a man who is the husband of your mother? (Children of the Mind)
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I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. '(Ender's Game) Spoken by Ender
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You can't defeat a powerful enemy unless you understand him completely, and you can't understand him unless you know the desires of his heart, and you can't know the desires of his heart until you truly love him.