βYou donβt meet the people you love, you recognize them.β
β Anna Gavalda, βLife, Only BetterβΒ , trans. Tina Kover
βYou and I know each other in our bonesβ
β Kurt Vonnegut, from a letter to Nanny VonnegutΒ
βbut everyone had this patina
Β of slightly bruised longing, this shimmer of
Β I think I knew you when we were children,
Β this look of Iβve loved you ever since you
Β and probably longer than thatβ
β Paul Hostovsky, from βEveryone was Beautiful,β Dear Truth (Main Street Rag, 2009)
βHeβs been here in my heart before I even knew him. Understand? Heβs always been here. Always.β
β Sandra Cisneros , from Woman at Hollering Creek: Stories; βNever Marry a Mexican,β
βYou came into my lifeβnot as one comes to visitβ¦but as one comes to a kingdom where all the rivers have been waiting for your reflection, all the roads, for your stepsβ¦β
β Vladimir Nabokov, in a letter to VΓ©ra Slonim (1923), Letters to VΓ©ra
βI love you. I feel as though we were never strangers, you and I, not even for a moment.β
β Friedrich Nietzsche, from a letter to Mathilde Trampedach
βEventually soulmates meet, for they have the same hiding place.β
βHere when I say βI never want to be without you,β
somewhere else I am saying
βI never want to be without you again.β And when I touch you
in each of the places we meet in all of the lives we are,
itβs with hands that are dying and resurrected.
When I donβt touch you itβs a mistake in any life,
in each place and forever.
β Bob Hicok,Β Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem
βShe said that she had been searching for my eyes in the crowd because she felt as if she were talking to my heart.β
β Audre Lorde, from βZami: A New Spelling of my Name,β published c. 1982
βWho knows? perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us yesterday, separate, in the eveningβ¦β
β Rainer Maria Rilke, from You who never arrived (tr. by Stephen Mitchell); Uncollected Poems: 1913β1918