the unbearable heaviness of being.

"in a way, i put all my romanticism into that one night. and i was never able to feel all this again. like somehow that night took things away from me. and i expressed them to you and you took them with you. it made me feel cold. like if love wasn't for me."

"it's not so easy for me to be a romantic. you start off that way, and after you've been screwed over a few times, you forget about all your delusional ideas and you just take what comes into your life. "

"it's better that i don't romantizie things as much anymore. i was suffering so much all the time. i still have lots of dreams, but not in regard to my love life. it doesn't make me sad. it's just the way it is."

"sometimes i put things in drawers inside my head and forget about it. i guess it's less painful to put certain things away than to live with them."

"memory is a wonderful thing, if you don't have to deal with the past."

"it's the same with people. i see in them little details. so specific to to each other. that move me and that i miss. and will always miss."

"i feel i was never able to forget anyone i've been with. because each person has specific qualities. you can never replace anyone. what is lost is lost."

"i will miss the person for the most mundane things. "

"there's been so much water under the bridge that it's not even about you anymore. it's about that time. that moment in time that is forever gone."

"reality and love are almost contridictory for me."

"i guess when you're young, you just believe there will be many people with whom you'll connect with. later in life, you realize that it only happens a few times."

"what does it mean? the right man? the love of your life? the concept is absurd. the idea that we can only be complete with another person is evil."

"it reminded me how genuinely romantic i was. how i had so much hope in things. and now it's like, i don't believe in anything that relates to love."

"i'm really happy only when i'm on my own. even being alone, it's better than sitting next to a lover and feeling lonely."

"we're moving all our industries to developing nations so we can get cheap labor, free of any environmental laws. the weapon industry is booming. five million people die every year from preventable water disease. so how is the world getting any better?"

“we could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this it the one that happened.”

“i hope you never think about anything as much as i think about you.”

“i wanted to touch him. to tell him that even if everyone left everyone, i would never leave him. he talked and talked. his words fell through him. trying to find the floor to his saddness.”

“it wasn’t the bombs and burning buildings. it was me. my thinking. the cancer of never letting go.”

“i hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love.”

“sometimes i can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives i’, not living.”“

“why didn’t i treat everything like it was the last time? my greatest regert is how much i believed in the future.”

“i’m so afraid of losing something i love, that i refuse to love anything at all

“i hated myself for going. why couldn’t i be the kind of person who stays?”

“you can’t love anything more than something you miss.”

“sometimes i imagine stitching all of our little touches together. how many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love?”

“i think and think and think. i’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.”

“we laughed and laughed. together and separately. out loud and silently. we were determined to ignore whatever needed to be ignored. to build a new world from nothing, if nothing in our world could be salvaged. it was one of the best days of my life. a day during which i lived my life and didn’t think about my life at all.”

"we all have such fateful objects-it may be a recurrent landscape in one case. a number in another. carefully chosen by the gods to attract events of specific significance for us: here shall john always stumble. there shall jane's heart always break."

"it was love at first sight. at last sight. at ever and ever sight."

"and the rest is rust and stardust."

"he broke my heart. you merely broke my life."

"and i looked and looked at her. and knew, as clearly as i know i am to die, that i loved her more than anything i had ever seen or imagined on earth. or hoped for anywhere else."

"we loved each other with a premature love. marked by a fierceness that so often destroys adult lives."

"all at once, we were madly, culmsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other. hopelessly, i should add."

"i was weeping again. drunk on the impossible past."

"don't cry. i'm sorry to have deceived you so much. but that's how life is."

"we can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives, nor perfect it on our lives to come."

"he was intelligent. he understood her paintings. he was handsome and good. but the more she thought about it, the more she longed to ravish his intelligence. defile his kindheartedness. and violate his powerless strength."

"i want you to be weak. as weak as i am."

"i know i am supposed to help you, but i can't. instead of being your support, i am your weight. life is very heavy to me and it is so light to you."

"there are things that can be accomplished only by violence. physical love is unthinkable without violence."

"does he love me? does he love anybody more than me? does he love me more than i love him? perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, has the additional effect of cutting it short."

"he realized he had no idea whether it was hysteria or love."