Lang Leav Memories Quotes

It was words that I fell for. In the end, it was words that broke my heart.

Then there is the boy you can never stop thinking about. Whenever you see his name, it trips you up. Even if it’s one that belongs to many others, even if he belongs to someone else.

She was the book that was not written. The sentence that was not scripted. She was the word you wished you could have said.

I just hope you realize how much you mean to me. I just wish I could remind you of how beautiful you are. I’m sorry I haven’t told you in so long. But please don’t think I have given up on you. I will never give up on you. My arms are wide open. There is always a place for you here.

I have always thought of memories as fragments, like colored glass shards in a kaleidoscope. It is the source of great beauty in our lives, yet the cause of such heartache.

Love a girl who writes, and live her many lives; You have yet to find her, beneath her words of guise. Kiss her blue inked fingers, forgive the pens they marked. The stain of your lips upon her, the one she can’t discard. Forget her tattered memories, or the pages others took; You are her ever-after, the hero of her book.

One day you meet someone and for some inexplicable reason, you feel more connected to this stranger than anyone else.

It seems an age ago, since you have left me, time has filled me, with words unsaid; as the sadness seeps into me slowly, and I am left to face the night ahead.

Stardust
 If you came to me with a face I have not seen, with a voice I have never heard, I would still know you. Even if centuries separated us, I would still feel you. Somewhere between the sand and the stardust, through every collapse and creation, there is a pulse that echoes of you and I.
 When we leave this world, we give up all our possessions and our memories. Love is the only thing we take with us. It is all we carry from one life to the next.

...it wasn't my choice to love you but it was mine to leave

Have you ever loved a rose, and bled against her thorns; and swear each night to let her go, then love her more by dawn.

It was the year you learned that shooting stars were either a blessing or a curse, depending on what you wanted to believe.

I know how hard it is to have to love someone in secret.

There's a particular kind of suffering to be experienced when you love something greater than yourself. A tender sacrifice.

I want you to know how happy you once made me and though you really did hurt me, in the end, I was better for it. I don't know if what we had was love, but if it wasn't, I hope never to fall in love. Because of you, I know I am too fragile to bear it.

Forget her tattered memories, or the pages others took; you are her ever after— the hero of her book.

I suppose it's only human nature to add and substract from our memories; to recall them the way we feel they should be remembered. After all, our lives are a living work of art - shouldn't we be allowed to shape it in any way we choose?

Patience Patience and Love agreed to meet at a set time and place; beneath the twenty-third tree in the olive orchard. Patience arrived promptly and waited. She checked her watch every so often but still, there was no sign of Love. Was it the twenty-third tree or the fifty-sixth? She wondered and decided to check, just in case. As she made her way over to the fifty-sixth tree, Love arrived at twenty-three, where Patience was noticeably absent. Love waited and waited before deciding he must have the wrong tree and perhaps it was another where they were supposed to meet. Meanwhile, Patience had arrived at the fifty-sixth tree, where Love was still nowhere to be seen. Both begin to drift aimlessly around the olive orchard, almost meeting but never do. Finally, Patience, who was feeling lost and resigned, found herself beneath the same tree where she began. She stood there for barely a minute when there was a tap on her shoulder. It was Love. .................................. “Where are you?” She asked. “I have been searching all my life.” “Stop looking for me,” Love replied, “and I will find you.

My heart is like a time capsule—it keeps safe the memory of you. I know it’s harder with you gone than if you had never been here at all—but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

You said my sadness was like the sun, beautiful from a distance but it hurt you too much to come closer.

The time may not be prime for us, though you are a special person. We may be just two different clocks, that do not tock, in unison.


I saw love in your smile and I recognized it for the first time in my life. But you had a plane to catch and I was already home.

Give me something I can write about.

I wish I could put a pen in your hand and gently remind you how the world has given you poetry and now you must give it back.

A Way Out Do you know what it is like to lie in bed awake; with thoughts to haunt you every night, of all your past mistakes. Knowing sleep will set it right - if you were not to wake.

Finally, I want you to know how sorry I am for pushing you away when I had only meant to bring you closer. And If I ever felt like home to you, it was because you were safe with me. I want you to know that most of all.

I want you to be happy. I want someone else to know the warmth of your smile, to feel the way I did when I was in your presence.

We will remain unwritten through history, no X will mark us on the map; but in books of prose and poetry, you loved me once, in a paragraph.

Take me someplace where I can feel something—I want to give away my heart. Tell me his name so I can know love when it speaks to me. Give me someone I can write about.

Love, he has abandoned me, do with me as you will. Love, he left - unceremoniously, why must I love him still? The best of me I gave to him - the years, the days, the hours. Precious little, in turn he'd given, like dew to a wilting flower. Love, he sheared away tenderly, my beauty, my strength, my mind, the gifts that were bestowed to me - were swallowed in his pride. Love, has he forgotten me? Please tell me what you've heard, I guard his memory jealously - with him I'd place my worth.

Isn't it strange how much of our lives are interchangeable, how little is truly ours.

I want you to remember my lips beneath your fingers and how you told me things you never told another soul. I want you to know that I have kept sacred, everything you had entrusted in me and I always will.

...and swear each night to let her go, then love more by dawn.

In 1953, we began naming hurricanes so we could remember them beyond the wreckage. So we could try to make sense of the destruction. This is the way I remember you.

It was a question I had worn on my lips for days—like a loose thread on my favorite sweater I couldn’t resist pulling—despite knowing it could all unravel around me.   “Do you love me?” I ask. In your hesitation I found my answer. 


Why do you write? he asked. So I can take my love for you and give it to the world, I reply. Because you won't take it from me.

In cemeteries of memories, our love will lie in caskets.

We number our days and divide our seasons. We endlessly define what it is to be in love. When in truth, spring blurs into summer and always has, long before that line was ever drawn.

Wishful Thinking You say you are over me, my heart— it skips, it sinks. I see you now with someone new, I stare, I stare, I blink. Someday, I'll be over you, I know, I know— I think.

I know you have seen things you wish you hadn't. You have done things you wish you could take back. And you wonder why you were thrown into the thick of it all - why you had to suffer the way you did. And as you are sitting there alone and hurting, I wish I could put a pen in your hand and gently remind you how the world has given you poetry and now you must give it back

I do know there are all kinds of barriers to love. I do believe the world needs less of them.

Reaching Out I have given so much to things that weren't worth my time. When all along, it's the people I love that I should have carried. It's the ones I cared for whom I should have been responsible. But maybe I'm too late. Because I don't know how to talk to you. I don't know how to ask you if you're okay. I don't know how to tell you I am so afraid of losing you. How much light would leave my life if you were no longer part of it. I just hope you realize how much you mean to me. I just wish I could remind you of how beautiful you are. I'm sorry I haven't told you in so long. But please don't think I have given up on you. I will never give up on you. My arms are wide open. There is always a place for you here.

A Bad Day When thoughts of all but one, are those I am keeping. When sore though there is none, for whom I am weeping. A curtain drawn before the sun, and I wish to go on sleeping.

The Butterfly Effect Close your eyes and think about that boy. Tell me how he makes you feel. Let your mind trace over his tired shoulders. Allow your thoughts to linger on that beautiful smile. Take a deep breath and try to push those dark feelings aside. For once let go of the reins you've wrapped so tightly around your heart. I know you are scared. Who could blame you? Love is a hurricane wrapped inside a chrysalis. And you are a girl walking into the storm.

Faith I whisper your name like a prayer - with all the hope of heaven. I trace the lines of your palm and draw a map to salvation. I hear the knock of your heart and I answer it like my calling.

When love finds you, it doesn't come as crashing waves or thunderbolts. It appears as a song on the radio or a particular blue in the sky. It dawns on you slowly, like a warm winter sunrise—where the promise of summer shines out from within.

As the seasons age us I close my eyes and wish for snow Alas the Irish seasons been foretold For Spring will dawn and I will go Into another season Jack Frost cold. And when its here, I wish for night As childhood memories flash right by To see the birds in humble flight I wish for Summer with a sigh And on I go to months so sweet Dawns sweet chorus and sunbeams bright I yearn for Autumn leaves under feet Yet now I dream of Winters night As Auld Lang Syne rings in New Year Alas! I’m one year older as Spring draws near.

There is a particular kind of suffering to be experienced when you love something greater than yourself. A tender sacrifice.

The memory of you is fading, a little at a time, and I can feel myself forgetting.

I have given so much to things that weren't worth my time. When all along, it's the people I love that I should have carried.

And you said ecstasy was a storm cloud, just before the rain would burst into the night sky, like a thousand aquatic stars—and not one single moment before.

I used to think I couldn't go a day without your smile. Without telling you things and hearing your voice back. Then, that day arrived and it was so damn hard but the next was harder. I knew with a sinking feeling it was going to get worse, and I wasn't going to be okay for a very long time. Because losing someone isn't an occasion or an event. It doesn't just happen once. It happens over and over again. I lose you every time I pick up your favorite coffee mug; whenever that one song plays on the radio, or when I discover your old t-shirt at the bottom of my laundry pile. I lose you every time I think of kissing you, holding you, or wanting you. I go to bed at night and lose you, when I wish could tell you about my day. And in the morning, when I wake and reach for the empty space across the sheets, begin to lose you all over again.

I have always thought of memories as fragments, like colored glass shards in a kaleidoscope. It is the source of great beauty in our lives, yet the cause of such heartache. It remains the bridge between our past and present - it gives weight and dimension to our very existence.

I know you’ve lost someone and it hurts. You may have lost them suddenly, unexpectedly. Or perhaps you began losing pieces of them until one day, there was nothing left. You may have known them all your life or you may have barely known them at all. Either way, it is irrelevant — you cannot control the depth of a wound another soul inflicts upon you. Which is why I am not here to tell you tomorrow is another day. That the sun will go on shining. Or there are plenty of fish in the sea. What I will tell you is this; it’s okay to be hurting as much as you are. What you are feeling is not only completely valid but necessary — because it makes you so much more human. And though I can’t promise it will get better any time soon, I can tell you that it will — eventually. For now, all you can do is take your time. Take all the time you need.

We will remain unwritten through history, no X will mark us on the map; but in books of prose and poetry, you loved me once, in a paragraph.

Then there was that year you fell in love. The one where there weren't any candles - just you walking late at night through the city streets with your heart in pieces, wanting to give yourself to the first stranger who called you beautiful.

Every day I measure the weight of my past against the present and feel the drag of what could have been.

It is the mark of a great poet to write words that feel as though they have stood witness to your most intimate memory of love.

Thoughts Dawn turns to day, as stars are dispersed; wherever I lay, I think of you first. The sun has arisen, the sky, a sad blue. I quietly listen— the wind sings of you. The thoughts we each keep, that are closer to heart, we think as we sleep— and you're always my last

The Rose Have you ever loved a rose, and watched her slowly bloom; and as her petals would unfold, you grew drunk on her perfume. Have you ever seen her dance, her leaves all wet with dew; and quivered with a new romance— the wind, he loved her too. Have you ever longed for her, on nights that go on and on; for now, her face is all a blur, like a memory kept too long. Have you ever loved a rose, and bled against her thorns; and swear each night to let her go, then love her more by dawn.

I don't think the moon ever meant to be a satellite, kept in loving orbit, locked in hopeless inertia, destined to repeat the same pattern over and over - to meet in eclipse with the sun - only when the numbers allowed".

Sad Things Why do you write sad things? he asked. When I am here, when I love you. Because someday , in one way or another, you will be taken from me or I you. It is inevitable. But please understand; from the moment I met you, I stopped writing for the past. I no longer write for the present. When I write sad things, I am writing for the future.

I know you have seen things you wish you hadn't. You have done things you wish you could take back. And you wonder why you were thrown into the thick of it all - why you had to suffer the way you did. And as you are sitting there alone and hurting, I wish I could put a pen in your hand and gently remind you how the world has given you poetry and now you must give it back.

You said I was like a bird of prey, caged by my captors and made to sing love songs to the sky. You said my sadness was like the sun, beautiful from a distance but it hurt you too much to come closer.

Nothing felt like mine anymore, not after you. All those little things that defined me; small sentimental trinkets, car keys, pin codes, and passwords. They all felt like you. And more than anything else, my number - the one you boldly asked for that night, amidst a sea of people, under a sky of talking satellites and glowing stars. You said no matter how many times you erased me from your phone, you would still recognize that number when it flashed on your screen. The series of sixes and nines, like the dip of my waist to the curves of my hips, your hands pressed into the small of my back. Nines and sixes that were reminiscent of two contented cats, curled together like a pair of speech marks. You said if you could never hold me or kiss me again, you could live with that. But you couldn't bear the thought of us not speaking and asked, at the very least, could I allow you that one thing? I wonder what went through your mind the day you dialed my number to find it had been disconnected. If your imagination had raced with thoughts of what new city I run to and who was sharing my bed. Isn't it strange how much of our lives are interchangeable, how little is truly ours. Someone else's ring tone, someone else's broken heart. These are the things we inherit by choice or by chance. And it wasn't my choice to love you but it was mine to leave. I don't think the moon ever meant to be a satellite, kept in loving orbit, locked in hopeless inertia, destined to repeat the same pattern over and over - to meet in eclipse with the sun - only when the numbers allowed.

Are you like me? Do you give too much, too quickly? Do you throw yourself blindly at the world, thinking that it will always open its arms up to you? Are you like me? Do you live with the dial turned up at full volume? Can you taste the salt of the sea when you're miles inland and the ocean feels like a fractured memory? Are you like me? Are you alive or just pretending?

Imperial is like Robert Caro’s The Power Broker with the attitude of Mike Davis’s City of Quartz, if Robert Caro had been raised in an abandoned grain silo by a band of feral raccoons, and if Mike Davis were the communications director of a heavily armed libertarian survivalist cult, and if the two of them had somehow managed to stitch John McPhee’s cortex onto the brain of a Gila monster, which they then sent to the Mexican border to conduct ten years of immersive research, and also if they wrote the entire manuscript on dried banana leaves with a toucan beak dipped in hobo blood, and then the book was line-edited during a 36-hour peyote séance by the ghosts of John Steinbeck, Jack London, and Sinclair Lewis, with 200 pages of endnotes faxed over by Henry David Thoreau’s great-great-great-great grandson from a concrete bunker under a toxic pond behind a maquiladora, and if at the last minute Herman Melville threw up all over the manuscript, rendering it illegible, so it had to be re-created from memory by a community-theater actor doing his best impression of Jack Kerouac. With photographs by Dorothea Lange. (Viking has my full blessing to use that as a blurb.)

I’ve done you a disservice,” he said at last. “It’s only fair to let you know, but you won’t have a normal life span.” I bit my lip. “Have you come to take my soul, then?” “I told you that’s not my jurisdiction. But you’re not going to die soon. In fact, you won’t die for a long time, far longer than I initially thought, I’m afraid. Nor will you age normally.” “Because I took your qi?” He inclined his head. “I should have stopped you sooner.” I thought of the empty years that stretched ahead of me, years of solitude long after everyone I loved had died. Though I might have children or grandchildren. But perhaps they might comment on my strange youthfulness and shun me as unnatural. Whisper of sorcery, like those Javanese women who inserted gold needles in their faces and ate children. In the Chinese tradition, nothing was better than dying old and full of years, a treasure in the bosom of one’s family. To outlive descendants and endure a long span of widowhood could hardly be construed as lucky. Tears filled my eyes, and for some reason this seemed to agitate Er Lang, for he turned away. In profile, he was even more handsome, if that was possible, though I was quite sure he was aware of it. “It isn’t necessarily a good thing, but you’ll see all of the next century, and I think it will be an interesting one.” “That’s what Tian Bai said,” I said bitterly. “How long will I outlive him?” “Long enough,” he said. Then more gently, “You may have a happy marriage, though.” “I wasn’t thinking about him,” I said. “I was thinking about my mother. By the time I die, she’ll have long since gone on to the courts for reincarnation. I shall never see her again.” I burst into sobs, realizing how much I’d clung to that hope, despite the fact that it might be better for my mother to leave the Plains of the Dead. But then we would never meet in this lifetime. Her memories would be erased and her spirit lost to me in this form. “Don’t cry.” I felt his arms around me, and I buried my face in his chest. The rain began to fall again, so dense it was like a curtain around us. Yet I did not get wet. “Listen,” he said. “When everyone around you has died and it becomes too hard to go on pretending, I shall come for you.” “Do you mean that?” A strange happiness was beginning to grow, twining and tightening around my heart. “I’ve never lied to you.” “Can’t I go with you now?” He shook his head. “Aren’t you getting married? Besides, I’ve always preferred older women. In about fifty years’ time, you should be just right.” I glared at him. “What if I’d rather not wait?” He narrowed his eyes. “Do you mean that you don’t want to marry Tian Bai?” I dropped my gaze. “If you go with me, it won’t be easy for you,” he said warningly. “It will bring you closer to the spirit world and you won’t be able to lead a normal life. My work is incognito, so I can’t keep you in style. It will be a little house in some strange town. I shan’t be available most of the time, and you’d have to be ready to move at a moment’s notice.” I listened with increasing bewilderment. “Are you asking me to be your mistress or an indentured servant?” His mouth twitched. “I don’t keep mistresses; it’s far too much trouble. I’m offering to marry you, although I might regret it. And if you think the Lim family disapproved of your marriage, wait until you meet mine.” I tightened my arms around him. “Speechless at last,” Er Lang said. “Think about your options. Frankly, if I were a woman, I’d take the first one. I wouldn’t underestimate the importance of family.” “But what would you do for fifty years?” He was about to speak when I heard a faint call, and through the heavy downpour, saw Yan Hong’s blurred figure emerge between the trees, Tian Bai running beside her. “Give me your answer in a fortnight,” said Er Lang. Then he was gone.

I don’t want you to leave, heartache, the last form of loving. I feel myself live when you hurt me not in yourself, or here, but further: in the earth, in the year you come from, in my love for her and everything it meant. In that sunken reality which denies itself and insists that it never existed, that it was only a pretext of mine for living. If you didn’t stay with me, heartache, irrefutably, I would believe that; but you do stay with me. Your truth assures me that nothing was a lie. And as long as I feel you, heartache, you will be the proof of another life in which you didn’t hurt me. The great proof, in the distance, that it existed, that it still exists, that she loved me, yes, that I’m still loving her. —Pedro Salinas, from “The Voice I Owe to You,” Memory in My Hands: The Love Poetry of Pedro Salinas (Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers, 2009)

I know you have seen things you wish you hadn't. You have done things you wish you could take back. And you wonder why you were thrown into the thick of it all - why you had to suffer the way you did. And as you are sitting there alone and hurting, I wish I could put a pen in your hand and gently remind you that the world has given you poetry and now you must give it back.

my heart is like a time capsule—it keeps safe the memory of you

She waits and waits for the dream to transact into memory. Until the day comes when she can no longer tell the difference.

Where were you?" she asked. "I have been searching all my life." " Stop looking for me," Love replied, "and I will find you.

Blue You begin to invent things after awhile. I suppose it’s only human nature to add and subtract from our memories; to recall them the way we feel they should be remembered. After all, our lives are a living work of art- shouldn’t we be allowed to shape it in any way we choose?

Finally, I want you to know how sorry I am for pushing you away when I had only meant to bring you closer. And If I ever felt like home to you, it was because you were safe with me. I want you to know that most of all.

Then there was that year you fell in love. The one where there weren't any candles - just you walking late at night through the city streets with your heart in pieces, wanting to give yourself to the first stranger who called you beautiful.

I know you have seen things you wish you hadn't. You have done things you wish you could take back. And you wonder why you were thrown into the thick of it all - why you had to suffer the way you did. And as you are sitting there alone and hurting, I wish I could put a pen in your hand and gently remind you how the world has given you poetry and now you must give it back.

I HAD YOU Last night I had a dream that felt like a memory. A glimpse of what could have been. Crossed signals from another life. Where instead of all this, I had you. And life was exquisitely simple. And we were desperately happy.