Mary Karr

I’m fading away, you know I used to be on fire.

Everything is clearer when you’re in love.

Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.

I never thought love could be so deep, so wide, so open, so full, so elevating! Such a teacher! Thank you for teaching me, growing me, deepening me!!

I won’t take anyone down if I crawl tonight. But I still let everyone down when I change in size.

We need to make love great again because black lives do matter, because all lives do matter.

Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to you. When you dare to reveal yourself fully. When you dare to be vulnerable.

Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.

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?

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Constancy in love is a good thing; but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy in every kind of effort.

I’d tell you how beautiful you look today, but there’s not enough time before sunset to tell how you set fire to a sundress; my mouth is overflowing from yesterday.

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

If you can’t hurt with me, don’t flirt with me.

Love is louder than the pressure to be perfect.