β
Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
Holding Eleanor's hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete, and completely alive.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
Happily ever after, or even just together ever after, is not cheesy,β Wren said. βItβs the noblest, like, the most courageous thing two people can shoot for.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
What are the chances youβd ever meet someone like that? he wondered. Someone you could love forever, someone who would forever love you back? And what did you do when that person was born half a world away? The math seemed impossible.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
He made her feel like more than the sum of her parts.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
I am going to MURDER YOUββ
βNo,β he says, pointing at me as he shifts backward again. βBad Juliette. You donβt like to kill people, remember? Youβre against that, remember? You like to talk about feelings and rainbowsβ
β
β
Tahereh Mafi (Ignite Me (Shatter Me, #3))
β
You give away nice like it doesn't cost you anything.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
What you are is a fucking tragedy, Simon Snow. You literally couldn't be a bigger mess."
He tries to kiss me, but I pull back- "And you like that?"
"I love it." He says
"Why?"
"Because we match.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Carry On (Simon Snow, #1))
β
I donβt like you, Park. Sometimes I think I live for you
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
You have to pretend you get an endgame. You have to carry on like you will; otherwise, you can't carry on at all.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Carry On (Simon Snow, #1))
β
Youβre never going to find a guy whoβs exactly like youβfirst of all, because that guy never leaves his dorm room.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
How do you not like the Internet? That's like saying, 'I don't like things that are convenient. And easy. I don't like having access to all of mankind's recorded discoveries at my fingertips. I don't like light. And knowledge.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
I feel sorry for you, and I'm going to be your friend."
"I don't want to be your friend," Cath said as sternly as she could. "I like that we're not friends."
"Me, too. I'm sorry you ruined it by being so pathetic.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
But you're so helpless sometimes. It's like watching a kitten with its head trapped in a Kleenex box.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
You can be the most beautiful person in the world and everybody sees light and rainbows when they look at you, but if you yourself don't know it, all of that doesn't even matter. Every second that you spend on doubting your worth, every moment that you use to criticize yourself; is a second of your life wasted, is a moment of your life thrown away. It's not like you have forever, so don't waste any of your seconds, don't throw even one of your moments away.
β
β
C. JoyBell C.
β
Nothing before you counts," he said. "And I can't even imagine an after."
She shook her head. "Don't."
"What?"
"Don't talk about after."
"I just meant that... I want to be the last person who ever kisses you, too.... That sounds bad, like a death threat or something. What I'm trying to say is, you're it. This is it for me.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
Last night you said you wanted to know what to expect so you could better select your attire. I told you we were going to visit a vampire in a Goth-den tonight. Why, then, Ms. Lane, do you look like a perky rainbow?
β
β
Karen Marie Moning (Darkfever (Fever, #1))
β
Cath felt like she was swimming in words. Drowning in them, sometimes.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
He's still looking in my eyes. Staring me down like he did that dragon, chin tilted and locked. "I'm not the Chosen One," he says.
I meet his gaze and sneer. My arm is a steel band around his waist. "I choose you," I say. "Simon Snow, I choose you.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Carry On (Simon Snow, #1))
β
Can't you just like a girl who likes you back?'
'None of them likes me back. I may as well like the one I really want.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
Our only kiss was like an accident- a beautiful gasoline rainbow.
β
β
Alice Sebold (The Lovely Bones)
β
No," Cath said, "Seriously. Look at you. Youβve got your shit together, youβre not scared of anything. Iβm scared of everything. And Iβm crazy. Like maybe you think Iβm a little crazy, but I only ever let people see the tip of my crazy iceberg. Underneath this veneer of slightly crazy and socially inept, Iβm a complete disaster.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
You look so blindingly cute right now, I feel like I need to make a pinhole in a piece of paper just to look at you.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
Sharing a room with the person you want most is like sharing a room with an open fire.
He's constantly drawing you in. And you're constantly stepping too close. And you know it's not good--that there is no good--that there's absolutely nothing that can ever come of it.
But you do it anyway.
And then...
Well. Then you burn.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Carry On (Simon Snow, #1))
β
I don't like you, Park," she said, sounding for a second like she actually meant it. "I..." - her voice nearly disappeared - "think I live for you."
He closed his eyes and pressed his head back into his pillow.
"I don't think I even breathe when we're not together," she whispered. "Which means, when I see you on Monday morning, it's been like sixty hours since I've taken a breath. That's probably why I'm so crabby, and why I snap at you. All I do when we're apart is think about you, and all I do when we're together is panic. Because every second feels so important. And because I'm so out of control, I can't help myself. I'm not even mine anymore, I'm yours, and what if you decide that you don't want me? How could you want me like I want you?"
He was quiet. He wanted everything she'd just said to be the last thing he heard. He wanted to fall asleep with 'I want you' in his ears.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
And because Iβm so out of control, I canβt help myself. Iβm not even mine anymore, Iβm yours, and what if you decide that you donβt want me? How could you want me like I want you?
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
Take off your glasses."
"Why? I thought you liked my glassess."
"I love your glasses. I especially love the moment when you take them off.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
Months are different in college, especially freshman year. Too much happens. Every freshman month equals six regular monthsβthey're like dog months.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
Itβs like being a fairy named Mary,β he goes on. βOr a vampire named Gampire,β I say. βGampire isnβt even a proper name, Snow. Youβre terrible at this game.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Carry On (Simon Snow, #1))
β
I didn't know someone could love me like this," she said. "Could love me and love me and love me without...needing space."
Lincoln wasn't asleep. He rolled on top of her.
"There's no air in space," he said.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Attachments)
β
I lean into him, because I'm cold and he's always warm. And because I like to remind him that I'm not afraid of him.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Carry On (Simon Snow, #1))
β
He'd stopped trying to bring her back. She only came back when she felt like it anyway, in dreams and lies and broken-down dΓ©jΓ vu.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
Mister Teatime had a truly brilliant mind, but it was brilliant like a fractured mirror, all marvellous facets and rainbows but, ultimately, also something that was broken.
β
β
Terry Pratchett (Hogfather (Discworld, #20; Death, #4))
β
I miss you, Eleanor. I want to be with you all the time. Youβre the smartest girl Iβve ever met, and the funniest, and everything you do surprises me. And I wish I could say that those are the reasons I like you, because that would make me sound like a really evolved human being β¦βBut I think itβs got as much to do with your hair being red and your hands being soft β¦ and the fact that you smell like homemade birthday cake
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
I look like a hobo?"
"Worse," he said. "Like a sad hobo clown."
"And you like it?"
"I love it."
As soon as he said it, she broke into a smile. And when Eleanor smiled, something broke inside of him.
Something always did.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
How do you feel when I smile at you?" he asked - and then he did smile at her, just a little.
Not like myself, Cath thought.
"Like an idiot," she said softly. "And I never want it to stop.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
It's more like you meet someone, and you fall in love, and you hope that that person is the oneβand then at some point, you have to put down your chips. You just have to make a commitment and hope that you're right.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Landline)
β
Memory is a tenuous thing, like a rainbow's end or a camera with a failing lens.
β
β
Ellen Hopkins
β
Georgie. You cannot be jealous of Dawn--that's like the sun being jealous of a lightbulb.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Landline)
β
She wanted to lose herself in him. To tie his arms around her like a tourniquet.
If she showed him how much she needed him, he'd run away.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
I don't like hello. It makes me sound like I have dementia, like I've never heard a phone ring before and I don't know what's supposed to happen next. Hello?
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them. Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud. Do not complain. Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.
β
β
Maya Angelou (Letter to My Daughter)
β
Take it from me: love has all the lasting permanence of a rainbow- beautiful while it's there, and just as likely to have disappeared by the time you blink.
β
β
Jodi Picoult
β
Damn, damn, damn," she said. "I never said why I like you, and now I have to go."
"That's okay," he said.
"It's because you're kind," she said. "And because you get all my jokes..."
"Okay." He laughed.
"And you're smarter than I am."
"I am not."
"And you look like a protagonist." She was talking as fast as she could think. "You look like the person who wins in the end. You're so pretty, and so good. You have magic eyes," she whispered. "And you make me feel like a cannibal."
"You're crazy."
"I have to go." She leaned over so the receiver was close to the base.
"Eleanor - wait," Park said. She could hear her dad in the kitchen and her heartbeat everywhere.
"Eleanor - wait - I love you.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
Safety, stability--it's an illusion. It's a false god, Simon. It's like clinging to a sinking raft instead of learning to swim.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Carry On (Simon Snow, #1))
β
I always get lost in the library,' he said, 'no matter how many times I go. In fact, I think I get lost there more, the more that I go. Like it's getting to know me and revealing new passages.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
Snow kissed me last night until my mouth was sore. He kissed me so much, I was worried Iβd Turn him with all my saliva. He held himself up on all fours above me and made me reach up for his mouthβand I did. I would again. Iβd cross every line for him.
Iβm in love with him.
And he likes this better than fighting.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Carry On (Simon Snow, #1))
β
I just want to knowβare you rooting for me? Are you hoping I pull this off?"
Cath's eyes settled on his, tentatively, like they'd fly away if he moved.
She nodded her head.
The right side of his mouth pulled up.
"I'm rooting for you," she whispered. She wasn't even sure he could hear her from the bed.
Levi's smile broke free and devoured his whole face.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and they're pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody's be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some wayβI can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it.
β
β
J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)
β
You think I'm cute?" He said thinkly, pulling on her hand.
She was glad he couldn't see her face. "I think you're..."
Beautiful. Breathtaking. Like the person in a Greek myth who makes one of the gods stop caring about being a god.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
You hated my rainbows, now you don't like my leather. Is there anything you like on me?
β
β
Karen Marie Moning (Dreamfever (Fever, #4))
β
Lincoln?β she asked.
βYes?β
βDo you believe in love at first sight?β
He made himself look at her face, at her wide-open eyes and earnest forehead. At her unbearably sweet mouth.
βI donβt know,β he said. βDo you believe in love before that?β
Her breath caught in her throat like a sore hiccup.
And then it was too much to keep trying not to kiss her.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Attachments)
β
No, I know,β Levi said. βBut itβs not you. You donβt push through every moment. You pay attention. You take everything in. I like that about youβI like that better.β
Cath closed her eyes and felt tears catch on her cheeks.
βI like your glasses,β he said. βI like your Simon Snow T-shirts. I like that you donβt smile at everyone, because then, when you smile at me.β¦ Cather.β He kissed her mouth. βLook at me.β
She did.
βI choose you over everyone.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
You can run and run as fast and as far as you like, but the truth is, wherever you run, there you are.
β
β
Cecelia Ahern (Where Rainbows End)
β
Words are like spices. Too many is worse than too few.
β
β
Joan Aiken (The Last Slice of Rainbow and Other Stories)
β
Don't leave me, Rainbow Girl."
Rainbow Girl. Was that who I was?
It seemed so long ago. I smiled faintly. "Remember the skirt I wore to MallucΓ©'s the night you told me to dress Goth?"
"It's upstairs in your closet. Never throw it away. It looked like a wet dream on you.
β
β
Karen Marie Moning (Shadowfever (Fever, #5))
β
I pictured a girl who made every moment, everything she touched, and everyone around her feel lighter and sweeter.
βI pictured you,β he said. βI just didnβt know what you looked like.
βAnd then, when I did know what you looked like, you looked like the girl who was all those things. You looked like the girl I loved.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Attachments)
β
You look like a protagonist.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
Drunk nerds. Not my thing.β
βYou like nerds.β
βNot nerds who join fraternities,β Cath said. βThatβs a whole subclass of nerds that Iβm not interested in.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
You act like there are two kinds of girls,' she said. 'The smart ones and the ones that boys like.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
Tyson- "Cash? Like...green paper?"
Percy- "Yeah."
Tyson- "Like the kind in duffel bags?"
Percy-"Yeah, but we lost those bags days a-g-g--."
"Tyson! How did you--"
Tyson- "Thought it was a feed bag for Rainbow. Found it floating in sea, but only paper inside. Sorry.
β
β
Rick Riordan
β
And as much as Iβd like to believe thereβs a truth beyond illusion, Iβve come to believe that thereβs no truth beyond illusion. Because, between βrealityβ on the one hand, and the point where the mind strikes reality, thereβs a middle zone, a rainbow edge where beauty comes into being, where two very different surfaces mingle and blur to provide what life does not: and this is the space where all art exists, and all magic.
β
β
Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch)
β
I didn't want to like him back. I tried to be mean to him."
"I thought you were just mean," Reagan said. "I liked that about you.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
You look different. You look unsettling.β
βYou look like you,β he said. βYou with the volume turned up.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
How does anyone ever know whether love is enough? It's an idiotic question. Like, if you fall in love, if you're that lucky, who are you to even ask whether it's enough to make you happy?
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Landline)
β
I know fuck-all about vampires. Itβs not like I got an instruction pamphlet when I was bitten.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Carry On (Simon Snow, #1))
β
She thought of ... the way he never made made her feel crazy, even when she was acting crazy, and never made her feel like a failure, even when she was failing.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Landline)
β
When Iβm writing my own stuff, itβs like swimming upstream. Or β¦ falling down a cliff and grabbing at branches, trying to invent the branches as I fall.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
So why arenβt you living with your sister?β
βShe wanted to meet new people,β Cath said.
βYou make it sound like she broke up with you.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
Can I?β he asks.
Can you what, Simon? Kiss me? Kill me? Break my heart?
I touch him like heβs made of butterfly wings.
βYou donβt have to ask.β I say it loud enough that heβll hear me, over everything.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Wayward Son (Simon Snow, #2))
β
It was like their lives were overlapping lines, like they had their own gravity. Usually, that serendipity thing felt like the nicest thing the universe had ever done for her.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
I know what itβs like to be distracted. To seek out distractions. To exhaust yourself doing every other little thing rather than face a blank page
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
Sometimes Simon kisses me like itβs the end of the world, and I worry he might believe that it is.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Wayward Son (Simon Snow, #2))
β
Do you feel like he ignores you?"
"No. I feel like he doesn't see me.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Attachments)
β
Trying to make sense of love is like trying to dissect a rainbow.
β
β
Suzanne Selfors (Coffeehouse Angel)
β
If Baz thinks Iβm ever letting him go, heβs wrong. I like him like this. Under my thumb. Under my hands. Not off plotting and scheming and talking to vampires.
Iβve got you now, I think. Iβve finally got you where I want you.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Carry On (Simon Snow, #1))
β
Love was a feeling completely bound up with color, like thousands of rainbows superimposed one on top of the other.
β
β
Paulo Coelho
β
Love is the very essence of life. It is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yet it is not found only at the end of the rainbow. Love is at the beginning also, and from it springs the beauty that arched across the sky on a stormy day. Love is the security for which children weep, the yearning of youth, the adhesive that binds marriage, and the lubricant that prevents devastating friction in the home; it is the peace of old age, the sunlight of hope shining through death. How rich are those who enjoy it in their associations with family, friends, and neighbors! Love, like faith, is a gift of God. It is also the most enduring and most powerful virtue.
β
β
Gordon B. Hinckley (Standing for Something: Ten Neglected Virtues That Will Heal Our Hearts and Homes)
β
I couldn't love anyone more than I do you, it would kill me. And I couldn't love anyone less because it would always feel like less. Even if I loved some other girl, that's all I would ever think about, the difference between loving her and loving you.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Attachments)
β
She carried herself like she was exactly the size everyone else wanted to be.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
English words are like prisms. Empty, nothing inside, and still they make rainbows.
β
β
Denis Johnson
β
Eleanor,β he said, just because he liked saying it, βwhy do you like me?β
βI donβt like you.β
He waited. And waitedβ¦
Then he started to laugh. βYouβre kind of mean,β he said.
βDonβt laugh. It just encourages me.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
What's that thing you wrote about Simon once, that his eyes followed Baz 'like he was the brightest thing in the room, like he cast everything else into shadow'? That's you. You can't look away from him.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
He already knows what I look like," Cath said. "There's no point in being tricky about it now."
"How is doing your hair--and maybe putting on some lip gloss--being tricky?"
"It's like I'm trying to distract him with something shiny.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
Love is our most unifying and empowering common spiritual denominator. The more we ignore its potential to bring greater balance and deeper meaning to human existence, the more likely we are to continue to define history as one long inglorious record of manβs inhumanity to man.
β
β
Aberjhani (Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry)
β
That's not the point," he said. "What kind of creep would I be if I let my girl carry something heavy while I walked along, swinging my arms?"
Your girl? "The kind that respects my wishes," she said. "And my strength, and my... arms."
Levi grinned some more. Because he wasn't taking her seriously. "I have a lot of respect for your arms. I like how they're attached to the rest of you.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Fangirl)
β
I love you," he said.
She looked up at him, her eyes shiny and black, then looked away. "I know," she said.
He pulled one of his arms out from under her and traced her outline against the couch. He could spend all day like this, running his hand down her ribs, into her waist, out to her hips and back again.... If he had all day, he would. If she weren't made of so many other miracles.
"You know?" he repeated. She smiled, so he kissed her. "You're not the Han Solo in this relationship, you know."
"I'm totally the Han Solo," she whispered. It was good to hear her. It was good to remember it was Eleanor under all this new flesh.
"Well, I'm not the Princess Leia," he said.
"Don't get so hung up on gender roles," Eleanor said.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal- that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.
β
β
Henry David Thoreau (Walden)
β
There was something about the music on that tape. It felt different. Like, it set her lungs and her stomach on edge. There was something exciting about it, and something nervous. It made Eleanor feel like everything, like the world, wasn't what she'd thought it was. And that was a good thing. That was the greatest thing.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
Oh, I love period dramas, especially period dramas starring Colin Firth. I'm like Bridget Jones if she were actually fat."
"Oh... Colin Firth. He should only do period dramas. And period dramas should only star Colin Firth. (One-star upgrade for Colin Firth. Two stars for Colin Firth in a waistcoat.)
"Keep typing his name, even his name is handsome.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Attachments)
β
You must have had such a great childhood with a man like that for your father. (Delphine)
Yeah. All puppy dogs and rainbows and those weird furry people with padded coat hangers on their heads that look like space aliens on acid. (Jericho)
You mean the Teletubbies? (Berith)
The fact that you know what they're called, Berith, truly scares me. (Jericho)
As a demon of torture, it behooves me to know all things that are deeply annoying. You'd be amazed how many people in the modern age no longer fear zombies as much as Teletubbies. (Berith)
Not really. I'd rather battle a brain-eating zombie any day than hear them sing. (Jericho)
β
β
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Dream Warrior (Dream-Hunter, #4; Dark-Hunter, #17))
β
And talking about dark! You think dark is just one color, but it ain't. There're five or six kinds of black. Some silky, some woolly. Some just empty. Some like fingers. And it don't stay still, it moves and changes from one kind of black to another. Saying something is pitch black is like saying something is green. What kind of green? Green like my bottles? Green like a grasshopper? Green like a cucumber, lettuce, or green like the sky is just before it breaks loose to storm? Well, night black is the same way. May as well be a rainbow.
β
β
Toni Morrison (Song of Solomon)
β
He never hurries. He never shows his cards. He always hangs up first....Like when we first started talking on the phone, he would always be the one who got off first. When we kissed, he always pulled away first. He always kept me just on the edge of crazy. Feeling like I wanted him too much, which just made me want him more....[It was] excruciating and wonderful. It feels good to want something that bad. I thought about him the way you think about dinner when you haven't eaten for a day and a half. Like you'd sell your soul for it.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Attachments)
β
My dear Rosie,
Unbeknownst to you I took this chance before, many, many years ago. You never received that letter and I'm glad because my feelings since then have changed dramatically. They have intensified with every passing day.
I'll get straight to the point because if I don't say what I have to say now, I fear it will never be said. And I need to say it.
Today I love you more than ever; I want you more than ever. I'm a man of fifty years of age coming to you, feeling like a teenager in love, asking you to give me a chance and love me back.
Rosie Dunne, I love you with all my heart. I have always loved you, even when I was seven years old and I lied about falling asleep on Santa watch, when I was ten years old and didn't invite you to my birthday party, when I was eighteen and had to move away, even on my wedding days, on your wedding day, on christenings, birthdays and when we fought. I loved you through it all. Make me the happiest man on this earth by being with me.
Please reply to me.
All my love,
Alex
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Cecelia Ahern (Love, Rosie)
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Dear Child,
Sometimes on your travel through hell, you meet people that think they are in heaven because of their cleverness and ability to get away with things. Travel past them because they don't understand who they have become and never will. These type of people feel justified in revenge and will never learn mercy or forgiveness because they live by comparison. They are the people that don't care about anyone, other than who is making them feel confident. They donβt understand that their deity is not rejoicing with them because of their actions, rather he is trying to free them from their insecurities, by softening their heart. They rather put out your light than find their own. They don't have the ability to see beyond the false sense of happiness they get from destroying others. You know what happiness is and it isnβt this. Donβt see their success as their deliverance. It is a mask of vindication which has no audience, other than their own kind. They have joined countless others that call themselves βsurvivorsβ. They believe that they are entitled to win because life didnβt go as planned for them. You are not like them. You were not meant to stay in hell and follow their belief system. You were bound for greatness. You were born to help them by leading. Rise up and be the light home. You were given the gift to see the truth. They will have an army of people that are like them and you are going to feel alone. However, your family in heaven stands beside you now. They are your strength and as countless as the stars. It is time to let go!
Love,
Your Guardian Angel
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Shannon L. Alder
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Ol' man Simon, planted a diamond. Grew hisself a garden the likes of none. Sprouts all growin' comin' up glowin' Fruit of jewels all shinin' in the sun. Colors of the rainbow. See the sun and the rain grow sapphires and rubies on ivory vines, Grapes of jade, just ripenin' in the shade, just ready for the squeezin' into green jade wine. Pure gold corn there, Blowin' in the warm air. Ol' crow nibblin' on the amnythyst seeds. In between the diamonds, Ol' man Simon crawls about pullin' out platinum weeds. Pink pearl berries, all you can carry, put 'em in a bushel and haul 'em into town. Up in the tree there's opal nuts and gold pears- Hurry quick, grab a stick and shake some down. Take a silver tater, emerald tomater, fresh plump coral melons. Hangin' in reach. Ol' man Simon, diggin' in his diamonds, stops and rests and dreams about one... real... peach.
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Shel Silverstein (Where the Sidewalk Ends)
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Rosie,
I'm returning to Boston tomorrow but before I go I wanted to write this letter to you. All the thoughts and feelings that have been bubbling up inside me are finally overflowing from this pen and I'm leaving this letter for you so that you don't feel that I'm putting you under any great pressure. I understand that you will need to take your time trying to decide on what I am about to say.
I no what's going on, Rosie. You're my best friend and I can see the sadness in your eyes. I no that Greg isn't away working for the weekend. You never could lie to me; you were always terrible at it. Your eyes betray you time and time again. Don't pretend that everything is perfect because I see it isn't. I see that Greg is a selfish man who has absolutely no idea just how lucky he is and it makes me sick.
He is the luckiest man in the world to have you, Rosie, but he doesn't deserve you and you deserve far better. You deserve someone who loves you with every single beat of his heart, someone who thinks about you constantly, someone who spends every minute of every day just wondering what you're doing, where you are, who you're with and if you're OK. You need someone who can help you reach your dreams and who can protect you from your fears. You need someone who will treat you with respect, love every part of you, especially your flaws. You should be with someone who can make you happy, really happy, dancing-on-air happy. Someone who should have taken the chance to be with you years ago instead of becoming scared and being too afraid to try.
I am not scared any more, Rosie. I am not afraid to try. I no what the feeling was at your wedding - it was jealousy. My heart broke when I saw the woman I love turning away from me to walk down the aisle with another man, a man she planned to spend the rest of her life with. It was like a prison sentence for me - years stretching ahead without me being able to tell you how I feel or hold you how I wanted to.
Twice we've stood beside each other at the altar, Rosie. Twice. And twice we got it wrong. I needed you to be there for my wedding day but I was too stupid to see that I needed you to be the reason for my wedding day.
I should never have let your lips leave mine all those years ago in Boston. I should never have pulled away. I should never have panicked. I should never have wasted all those years without you. Give me a chance to make them up to you. I love you, Rosie, and I want to be with you and Katie and Josh. Always.
Please think about it. Don't waste your time on Greg. This is our opportunity. Let's stop being afraid and take the chance. I promise I'll make you happy.
All my love,
Alex
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Cecelia Ahern (Love, Rosie)
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I love the stillness of the wood;
I love the music of the rill:
I love the couch in pensive mood
Upon some silent hill.
Scarce heard, beneath yon arching trees,
The silver-crested ripples pass;
and, like a mimic brook, the breeze
Whispers among the grass.
Here from the world I win release,
Nor scorn of men, nor footstep rude,
Break into mar the holy peace
Of this great solitude.
Here may the silent tears I weep
Lull the vested spirit into rest,
As infants sob themselves to sleep
Upon a mothers breast.
But when the bitter hour is gone,
And the keen throbbing pangs are still,
Oh, sweetest then to couch alone
Upon some silent hill!
To live in joys that once have been,
To put the cold world out of sight,
And deck life's drear and barren scene
With hues of rainbow-light.
For what to man the gift of breath,
If sorrow be his lot below;
If all the day that ends in death
Be dark with clouds of woe?
Shall the poor transport of an hour
Repay long years of sore distressβ
The fragrance of a lonely flower
Make glad the wilderness?
Ye golden house of life's young spring,
Of innocence, of love and truth!
Bright, beyond all imagining,
Thou fairy-dream of youth!
I'd give all wealth that years have piled,
The slow result of Life's decay,
To be once more a little child
For one bright summer's day.
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Lewis Carroll
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Brod's life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside of her. But there was no release. Table, ivory, elephant charm, rainbow, onion, hairdo, mollusk, Shabbos, violence, cuticle, melodrama, ditch, honey, doily...None of it moved her. She addressed her world honestly, searching for something deserving of the volumes of love she knew she had within her, but to each she would have to say, I don't love you. Bark-brown fence post: I don't love you. Poem too long: I don't love you. Lunch in a bowl: I don't love you. Physics, the idea of you, the laws of you: I don't love you. Nothing felt like anything more than what it actually was. Everything was just a thing, mired completely in its thingness.
If we were to open a random page in her journal- which she must have kept and kept with her at all times, not fearing that it would be lost, or discovered and read, but that she would one day stumble upon that thing which was finally worth writing about and remembering, only to find that she had no place to write it- we would find some rendering of the following sentiment: I am not in love.
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Jonathan Safran Foer (Everything Is Illuminated)
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...Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers... for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality... But I had gradually come by this time, i.e., 1836 to 1839, to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow at sign, &c., &c., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian.
...By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported, (and that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become), that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost uncomprehensible by us, that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events, that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eyewitnesses; by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions of the earth like wild-fire had some weight with me. Beautiful as is the morality of the New Testament, it can be hardly denied that its perfection depends in part on the interpretation which we now put on metaphors and allegories.
But I was very unwilling to give up my belief... Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all of my friends, will be everlastingly punished.
And this is a damnable doctrine.
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Charles Darwin (The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809β82)