Mary Karr

For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.

I don’t feel that no big stone should be put over my head, saying he did this, he did that. Unless there’s something that I really did do. I believe I’m just ordinary. And I’d like for people to think of me that way, as just a guy that tried. Wanted to be loved by other people because he loved people.

Don’t forget me, don’t forget me. I wouldn’t leave you if you’d let me.

The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise, we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

Love creates an ‘us’ without destroying a ‘me’.

When you make loving others the story of your life, there’s never a final chapter, because the legacy continues. You lend your light to one person, and he or she shines it on another and another and another. And I know for sure that in the final analysis of our lives- when the to-do lists are no more, when the frenzy is finished, when our e-mail inboxes are empty- the only thing that will have any lasting value is whether we’ve loved others and whether they’ve loved us.

I’m a different man now. I’m still a romantic, I still believe in love, but when I met Barbara I was looking for it. Now, I don’t know.

Don’t ever let anyone keep your heart on a shelf just to take it down whenever it is convenient for them to feel.

I’m only ever in two places – with you or on the way.

Am I in love with you? Or am I in love with the feeling?

True love does not leave you a choice.

Have you ever been so melancholy, that you wanted to fit in the palm of your beloved’s hand? And lie there, for fortnights, or decades, or the length of time between stars? In complete silence?

I have never had trouble to love others, but loving myself was difficult. For years I didn’t like myself, so how could I love myself. It has taken time, and still there is a way to go, but I can say, not only do I like myself, but also care about myself enough to start loving myself too.

To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.

I knew from that first moment we met. It was not love at first sight exactly, but – familiarity. Like oh, hello, it’s you. It’s going to be you. Game over.