The best imitation of myself

“All broken hearts are circumstantial. Every lovelorn jerk is the victim of bad timing, good intentions, and someone else’s poor decision making.” — Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End

“While I can’t have you, I long for you. I am the kind of person who would miss a train or a plane to meet you for coffee. I’d take a taxi across town to see you for ten minutes. I’d wait outside all night if I thought you would open the door in the morning. If you call me and say ‘Will you…’ my answer is ‘Yes’, before your sentence is out. I spin worlds where we could be together. I dream you.”  — Jeanette Winterson, “Desire”

“You know how it is when you get back with somebody you’ve loved. It felt better than it ever was, better than it ever could be again.” ― Junot Díaz, Drown

“It would be difficult to say which had seen highest perfection in the other, or which had been the happiest: she, in receiving his declarations and proposals, or he in having them accepted.” ― Jane Austen, Persuasion

“Because that is when you love somebody - when you see them being game in the face of the worst. Not courageous. Not heroic. Just game.” ― Philip Roth, The Human Stain

“While I can’t have you, I long for you. I am the kind of person who would miss a train or a plane to meet you for coffee. I’d take a taxi across town to see you for ten minutes. I’d wait outside all night if I thought you would open the door in the morning. If you call me and say ‘Will you…’ my answer is ‘Yes’, before your sentence is out. I spin worlds where we could be together. I dream you.”  — Jeanette Winterson, “Desire”

***It’s been pointed out this quote was originated by Rebecca West, and reproduced in On Beauty. Sorry for any confusion!

— Charles Bukowski, What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

“Some things are so impossible, so fantastic, that when they happen, you are not at all surprised. Their sheer impossibility has made you imagine them too many times in your head, and when you find yourself on that longed-for moonlit path, it seems unreal but still, somehow, familiar. You dreamed of it, of course; you know it like a memory.”  — Andrew Sean Greer, The Confessions of Max Tivoli

“It doesn’t matter how sensitive you are or how damn smart and educated you are, if you’re not both at the same time, if your heart and your brain aren’t connected, aren’t working together harmoniously, well, you’re just hopping through life on one leg. You may think you’re walking, you may think you’re running a damn marathon, but you’re only on a hop trip.”  — Tom Robbins, Villa Incognito

“She was always waiting, it seemed to be her forte.” — D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

“I’m tired and I’m sick to death of being without you.” — Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

— Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“None are so fallible as those who are sure they’re right.” — Strunk & White, The Elements of Style

“She wasn’t ready to settle down, she told her friends. That was one way of putting it. Another would have been that she had not found anyone to settle down with. There had been several men in her life, but they hadn’t been convincing. They’d been somewhat like her table - quickly acquired, brightened up a little, but temporary. The time for that kind of thing was running out, however. She was tired of renting.” — Margaret Atwood, Moral Disorder

“Some people meet the way the sky meets the earth, inevitably, and there is no stopping or holding back their love. It exists in a finished world, beyond the reach of common sense.”  — Louise Erdrich, Tales of Burning Love

“I am not fit to marry. I am often cross, and I like my own way, and I have a distaste for men.” — Anthony Trollope, He Knew He Was Right