Love Imprint Quotes

Imagine all the people you meet in your life. There are so many. They come in like waves, trickling in and out with the tide. Some waves are much bigger and make more of an impact than others. Sometimes the waves bring with them things from deep in the bottom of the sea and they leave those things tossed onto the shore. Imprints against the grains of sand that prove the waves had once been there, long after the tide recedes. That was what Atlas was telling me when he said “I love you.” He was letting me know that I was the biggest wave he’d ever come across. And I brought so much with me that my impressions would always be there, even when the tide rolled out.

People leave imprints on our lives, shaping who we become in much the same way that a symbol is pressed into the page of a book to tell you who it comes from. Dogs, however, leave paw prints on our lives and our souls, which are as unique as fingerprints in every way.

… when you feel that kind of all-consuming need for someone, a person you’d do fucking anything for, no matter what? They’re in your fucking skin, in your soul, like the essence of who they are is imprinted on you so completely like the very air you breathe… That’s love.

love him. I still do and I always will. He was a huge wave that left a lot of imprints on my life, and I’ll feel the weight of that love until I die. I’ve accepted that.

… What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I'll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusionary -property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life -don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn for happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides. If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes can see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart -and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it may be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted on their memory.

To me, these days will never end. I am always there, in that room with her, or if not I, the imprint of myself - my fossil-love

What truly ties us together is not blood but pain. When we love someone and lose them, that loss imprints itself on everyone else we love too.

A Litany for Survival For those of us who live at the shoreline standing upon the constant edges of decision crucial and alone for those of us who cannot indulge the passing dreams of choice who love in doorways coming and going in the hours between dawns looking inward and outward at once before and after seeking a now that can breed futures like bread in our children's mouths so their dreams will not reflect the death of ours: For those of us who were imprinted with fear like a faint line in the center of our foreheads learning to be afraid with our mother's milk for by this weapon this illusion of some safety to be found the heavy-footed hoped to silence us For all of us this instant and this triumph We were never meant to survive. And when the sun rises we are afraid it might not remain when the sun sets we are afraid it might not rise in the morning when our stomachs are full we are afraid of indigestion when our stomachs are empty we are afraid we may never eat again when we are loved we are afraid love will vanish when we are alone we are afraid love will never return and when we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard nor welcomed but when we are silent we are still afraid So it is better to speak remembering we were never meant to survive.

She wanted to write to him. Tell him she was glad he was back, that he was alive, that he was home and safe. But words to him no longer fit right in her her mouth.Words which belonged in his ownership were no longer hers to give. Silence was the only acceptable state her heart would grant. He would never know what he missed, because she refused to be heard in his presence. All the words he could have had, all the phrases he might have danced with. The smiles which would have been imprinted upon his heart, would never be. And his lips would never be able to reply to the words she could not say.

I'm not going to try and change your mind." "If you're here, you accept it's my choice. This is the first thing I've been in control of since the accident." "I know." And there it was. He knew it, and I knew it. There was nothing left for me to do. Do you know how hard it is to say nothing ? When every atom of you strains to do the opposite? I just tried to be, tried to absorb the man I loved through osmosis, tried to imprint what I had left of him on myself. I did not speak...

In psychology (okay, Twilight) they teach you about the notion of imprinting, and I think it applies here. I reverse-imprinted with athleticism. Ours is the great non-love story of my life.

The calcium in collarbones I have kissed. The iron in the blood flushing those cheeks. We imprint our intimacies upon atoms born from an explosion so great it still marks the emptiness of space. A shimmer of photons bears the memory across the long dark amnesia. We will be carried too, mysterious particles that we are.

And there it was. He knew it, and I knew it. There was nothing left for me to do. Do you know how hard it is to say nothing ? When every atom of you strains to do the opposite? I just tried to be, tried to absorb the man I loved through osmosis, tried to imprint what I had left of him on myself. I did not speak...

I want to whisper poetry into your mind and imprint love letters to your soul and dance with you in an empty white room of potential

He loved her beyond earth, heaven, or hell. Every moment out of her company was agony; every moment with her was the only peace he had ever known. Every touch of her hands left an imprint that ate down to his soul. He would have killed himself before admitting it to anyone. The truth was buried deep in his heart.

I love him. I still do and I always will. He was a huge wave that left a lot of imprints on my life, and I’ll feel the weight of that love until I die. I’ve accepted that.

You’re perfect,” he said, finishing his thought as if she hadn’t interrupted. “I don’t care if you see dead wolves and turn into a living ice sculpture when you’re having a bad day. I don’t care if I have an imprint of your teeth on my shoulder. I don’t care if you’re … fixed.” He spat the word like it tasted bad. “I want you to be safe and happy. That’s all.

That's because you're interpreting it the wrong way. I didn't mean it as a wistful, overdramatic declaration. I mean that the love I felt for him was huge and real, and, while painful, it forever changed me as a person, in the same way that being your brother reflects and changes how I evolve, and vice versa. The important people in our lives leave imprints. They may stay or go in the physical realm, but they are always there in your heart, because they helped form your heart. There's no getting over that.

There is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives. Those who are lucky enough to find it ease like water over a stone, onto its fluid contours, and are home. Some find it in the place of their birth; others may leave a seaside town, parched, and find themselves refreshed in the desert. There are those born in rolling countryside who are really only at ease in the intense and busy loneliness of the city. For some, the search is for the imprint of another; a child or a mother, a grandfather or a brother, a lover, a husband, a wife, or a foe. We may go through our lives happy or unhappy, successful or unfulfilled, loved or unloved, without ever standing cold with the shock of recognition, without ever feeling the agony as the twisted iron in our soul unlocks itself and we slip at last into place.

If all the women over the world have been permitted to be married to only one man, except one woman. He'd love to marry that woman. That is the imprint of man

You are imprinted in and on the fabric of my heart.

What do people see in me on the first impression? Can they still see what I was until not long ago? Is there any imprint left from the love I knew? A rebirth mark?

Half naked, he drank her in with his eyes, imprinting this moment into his mind. This, he would take to his death – the woman that stirred him to life.

Once I passed through a populous city imprinting my brain for future use with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions, Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I Casually met there who detained me for love of me, Day by day and night by night we were together—all else Has long been forgotten by me, I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung To me, Again we wander, we love, we separate again, Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go, I see her close beside me with silent lips sad and tremulous.

I was all too aware of his hands resting on my lower back, their imprints like sweet flames that seemed to go through the thin fabric of my dress and onto my skin.

But when you feel that kind of all-consuming need for someone, a person you'd do fucking anything for, no matter what? They're in your fucking skin, in your soul, like the essence of who they are is imprinted on you so completely that the very air you breathe and each molecule of who you are is tangled together. That's love.

I like to keep a little bit of nervousness simmering. It keeps mortals alert at crucial moments. Sensitive to every detail. It imprints lasting memories. These moments belong to forever" -Aphrodite

Children have empty erasable white boards upon which big people write indelibly imprinted messages into their tender subconscious minds.

She hoped that although he could not hear her she could somehow imprint her ordinary love upon his memory through all eternity, hoped he would rise thinking of her, we were each other, we were each other, not that it mattered much in the long run but what else mattered as much.

Maggie." He chuckled. "I can't really be mad at you in case you haven't noticed." "I know, I know. The imprint," I said begrudgingly. "No, not the imprint. It's you. You're so sweet and you care about everybody. You hate when people are upset with you. You love cream soda. It's kind of hard to be mad at someone who's like that.

They're in your fucking skin, in your soul, like the essence of who they are is imprinted on you so completely they are the very air you breathe, like each molecule of who you are is tangled together. That's love.

I suppose, in some sense, wills are like maps: they are the imprint we leave, the places our affections have been entrenched; the work we have done; the money we have burrowed away; the furrows and the paths that lead back to spaces we have gone, and marked, and loved.

Hannah was his love, but she couldn't fill the place in his heart that had been occupied ever since one pale, ridiculous posh boy had imprinted on him like a baby duck and started following him around.

He was a super shiny boy and I liked the shape of him. Under the blanket. In the shower. I liked his shadow on the street and his imprint on the sofa. I hated the smell of hair gel on his head, but I loved it on the pillow. I love the smell of losing someone.

When we were babies, we didn’t smile sweetly at our mothers to get them to take care of us. We didn’t pinpoint our discomfort by putting it into words. We simply opened our mouths and screamed. And it didn’t take us long to learn that, the louder we screamed, the quicker they came. The success of this tactic was turned into an “imprint,” a part of our stored memory about how to get the world to respond to our needs: “When you are frustrated, provoke the people around you.

Warm familiar scents drift softly from the oven, And imprint forever upon our hearts That this is home and that we are loved.

Violinists wear the imprint on their necks with pride For they are the players of harmony. Pilgrims, too, wear the imprint on their foreheads with pride For they are the conductors of unity. And Lovers? Why, they are made humble by the imprint on their hearts For they are merely the instruments of rhapsody.

who insisted every day that I see my own worth beyond my mother’s rejecting eyes. But of course, a mother’s eyes are the very first mirror we look into, the image that gets imprinted on our souls—whether they gaze back at us with love or with disgust. So I don’t know how to differentiate between her perceptions of me and my own when hers were the first I’ve ever known, so deeply ingrained from the second I hit the world.

I love you, I love you, my heart is a rose which your love has brought to bloom, my life is a desert fanned by the delicious breeze of your breath, and whose cool spring are your eyes; the imprint of your little feet makes valleys of shade for me, the odour of your hair is like myrrh, and wherever you go you exhale the perfumes of the cassia tree. Love me always, love me always. You have been the supreme, the perfect love of my life; there can be no other...

Because I realize now, that's the way it works. That if you're lucky, you might get to fall in love so hard and so deep, that it changes you. That love seeps its way into every atom and molecule in your whole being, so that even if it's over, or the two of you are forced apart, you'll always carry the imprint of their soul with you, steady as a heartbeat. Forever....

There is a spot on via Santa Maria dell' Anima that I revisit every time I'm in Rome. I'll stare at it for a second, and suddenly it'll all come back to me. I had just thrown up that night and on the way back to the bar you kissed me. People kept walking by but I didn't care, nor did you. That kiss is still imprinted there, thank goodness. It's all I have from you. This and your shirt.

I saw that pretty much everyone bore the brutal imprint of love, whether it was lost, whipped away from them, or simply vanished into a grave.

I love him. I still do and I always will. He was a huge wave that left a lof of imprints on my life, and I'll feel the weight of that love until I die. I've accepted that.

I love you, Lily. Everything you are. I love you." I know those words get thrown around a lot, especially by teenagers. A lot of times prematurely and without much merit. But when he said them to me, I knew he wasn't saying it like he was in love with me. It wasn't that kind of "I love you." Imagine the people you meet in your life. There are so many. They come in like waves, trickling in and out with the tide. Some waves are much bigger and make more of an impact than others. Sometimes the waves bring with them things from deep in the bottom of the sea and they leave those things tossed on the shore. Imprints against the grains of sand that prove the waves had once been there, long after the tide recedes. That was what Atlas was telling me wen he said "I love you." He was letting me know that I was the biggest wave he'd ever come across. And I brought so much with me that my impression would always be there, even when the tide rolled out.

I love this place, too, it’s imprinted on me as much as you are. But in the end, it’s still for you. I love you. I’m in love with you. I’m not going home. You are my home. I’m staying with you.

He had lived without her before. He could get over it! In a year or so he'd be able to walk straight past her without his heart so much as missing a beat. He needed her as much as a drunk needs a cork! But he understood all too quickly how vain these thoughts were. How can you tear something out of your heart? Your heart isn't made out of paper and your life isn't written down in ink. You can't erase the imprint of years.

Imagine all the people you meet in your life. There are so many. They come in like waves, trickling in and out with the tide. Some waves are much bigger and make more of an impact than others. Sometimes the waves bring with them things from deep in the bottom of the sea and they leave those things tossed onto the shore. Imprints against the grains of sand that prove the waves had once been there, long after the tide recedes. That was what Atlas was telling me when he said “I love you.” He was letting me know that I was the biggest wave he’d ever come across. And I brought so much with me that my impressions would always be there, even when the tide rolled out.

That's because you're interpretting it the wrong way. I don't mean it as a wistful, overdramatic declaration. I meant that the love I felt for him was huge and real, and, while painful, it forever changed me as a person, in the same way that being your brother reflects and changed how I evolve, and vice versa. The important people in our lives leave imprints. They may stay or go in the physical realm, but they are always there in your heart, because they helped form your heart. There's no getting over that.

Places We Love Places we love exist only through us, Space destroyed is only illusion in the constancy of time, Places we love we can never leave, Places we love together, together, together, And is this room really a room, or an embrace, And what is beneath the window: a street or years? And the window is only the imprint left by The first rain we understood, returning endlessly, And this wall does not define the room, but perhaps the night Your son began to move in your sleeping blood, A son like a butterfly of flame in your hall of mirrors, The night you were frightened by your own light, And this door leads into any afternoon Which outlives it, forever peopled With your casual movements, as you stepped, Like fire into copper, into my only memory; When you go, space closes over like water behind you, Do not look back: there is nothing outside you, Space is only time visible in a different way, Places we love we can never leave.

I have begun to wonder what actually happens in our brains when we return to half-remembered places. What is memory's perspective? Does the man revise the boy's view or is the imprint relatively static, a vestige of what was once intimately known?

The word ‘love’ is, in fact, the way we commonly describe the emotional feelings that accompany the imprinting process.

The idea of love walked along the water and her gaze was full of absence and her eyes spat lighting. The impressionable evening received by turns the imprints of grasses, clouds, bodies, and wore crazy astronomical designs. The idea of love walked straight ahead without seeing anything; she was wearing tiny isosceles mirrors whose perfect assemblage was amazing. They were so many images of fish tails, when, by their angelic nature, they answer the promise one might make of always finding each other again. Finding each other again even in the depths of a forest, where the thread of a star is an articulation more silent than life, the dawn a liquor stronger than blood. Who is lost, who truly wanders off when a cup of coffee is steaming in the fog and waiters dressed in snow circulate patiently on the surface of floors whose desired height can be indicated with one's hands? Who? A solitary man whom the idea of love has just left and who tucks in his spirit like an imaginary bed. The man falls all the same and in the next room, under the moon-white verandah, a woman rises whom the idea of love has abandoned. The gravel weeps outside, a rain of glass is falling in which we recognize small chains, tears in which we have time to see ourselves, mirror tears, shards of windows, singular crystals like the ones we witness in our hand on awakening, leaves and the faded petals of those roses that once embelished certain distillery bottles. It's just that the idea of love, it seems angry with love. This is how it began.

That was the way of the world: if you were a woman, then you had a job to do, and that was to pretend to love everyone else walking all over your body, leaving imprints on your face. You were supposed to crave it, to beg for more.

Beauty is the only human aspect which cannot be captured on any canvas howsoever hard an artist tries. At the most, the undaunted artist can replicate the beauty on paper but what is a replica in comparison to the original! The humbling resemblance can only be respected, not truly adored. Beauty cannot be imprisoned in the lens of a camera. The images of beauty are a moment of its essence. Beauty cannot be displayed to evoke pleasure for all on a cinema screen. Those are just its imprints, mere illusions of its existence. Beauty cannot be described by words; it cannot be written or read about. There are no suitable words in all the languages of the world, ancient or modern to hold it between a paper and a pen or a script and an eye. Beauty can only be experienced from far, its delightful aroma can only be tasted through one’s eyes and its pleasurable sight can only be felt from the soul. Beauty can only be best described at its origin through a befuddling silence, the kind that leaves one almost on the verge of a pleasurable death, just because one chooses beauty over life. There is nothing in this world to hold something so pure, so divine except a loving heart. And it is the only manner through which love recognises love; the language of love has no alphabet, no words.

I’m such a negative person, and always have been. Was I born that way? I don’t know. I am constantly disgusted by reality, horrified and afraid. I cling desperately to the few things that give me some solace, that make me feel good. I hate most of humanity. Though I might be very fond of particular individuals, humanity in general fills me with contempt and despair. I hate most of what passes for civilization. I hate the modern world. For one thing there are just too Goddamn many people. I hate the hordes, the crowds in their vast cities, with all their hateful vehicles, their noise and their constant meaningless comings and goings. I hate cars. I hate modern architecture. Every building built after 1955 should be torn down! I despise modern music. Words cannot express how much it gets on my nerves – the false, pretentious, smug assertiveness of it. I hate business, having to deal with money. Money is one of the most hateful inventions of the human race. I hate the commodity culture, in which everything is bought and sold. No stone is left unturned. I hate the mass media, and how passively people suck up to it. I hate having to get up in the morning and face another day of this insanity. I hate having to eat, shit, maintain the body – I hate my body. The thought of my internal functions, the organs, digestion, the brain, the nervous system, horrify me. Nature is horrible. It’s not cute and loveable. It’s kill or be killed. It’s very dangerous out there. The natural world is filled with scary, murderous creatures and forces. I hate the whole way that nature functions. Sex is especially hateful and horrifying, the male penetrating the female, his dick goes into her hole, she’s impregnated, another being grows inside her, and then she must go through a painful ordeal as the new being pushes out of her, only to repeat the whole process in time. Reproduction – what could be more existentially repulsive? How I hate the courting ritual. I was always repelled by my own sex drive, which in my youth never left me alone. I was constantly driven by frustrated desires to do bizarre and unacceptable things with and to women. My soul was in constant conflict about it. I never was able to resolve it. Old age is the only relief. I hate the way the human psyche works, the way we are traumatized and stupidly imprinted in early childhood and have to spend the rest of our lives trying to overcome these infantile mental fixations. And we never ever fully succeed in this endeavor. I hate organized religions. I hate governments. It’s all a lot of power games played out by ambition-driven people, and foisted on the weak, the poor, and on children. Most humans are bullies. Adults pick on children. Older children pick on younger children. Men bully women. The rich bully the poor. People love to dominate. I hate the way humans worship power – one of the most disgusting of all human traits. I hate the human tendency towards revenge and vindictiveness. I hate the way humans are constantly trying to trick and deceive one another, to swindle, to cheat, and take unfair advantage of the innocent, the naïve and the ignorant. I hate the vacuous, false, banal conversation that goes on among people. Sometimes I feel suffocated; I want to flee from it. For me, to be human is, for the most part, to hate what I am. When I suddenly realize that I am one of them, I want to scream in horror.

Sometimes I look at the lives of the people around me and I wonder if we aren’t all destined to leave a trail of damage. It’s not just your mum and dad who fuck you up, Mr. Larkin. I gazed around me, like someone suddenly handed clear glasses, and I saw that pretty much everyone bore the brutal imprint of love, whether it was lost, whipped away from them, or simply vanished into a grave.

Perhaps it was Helen's way of falling in love--a curious way to Margaret, whose agony and whose contempt of Henry were yet imprinted with his image. Helen forgot people. They were husks that had enclosed her emotion.

Kev loved her. Not in the way that novelists and poets described. Nothing so tame. He loved her beyond earth, heaven, or hell. Every moment out of her company was agony; every moment with her was the only peace he had ever known. Every touch of her hands left an imprint that ate down to his soul. He would have killed himself before admitting it to anyone. The truth was buried deep in his heart.

A handful of experiences when I was small have made me a confirmed nonathlete. In psychology (okay, Twilight) they teach you about the notion of imprinting, and I think it applies here. I reverse-imprinted with athleticism. Ours is the great non-love story of my life.” — Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (and other concerns)

when she was 7, a boy pushed her on the playground she fell headfirst into the dirt and came up with a mouthful of gravel and lines of blood chasing each other down her legs when she told her teacher what happened, she laughed and said ‘boys will be boys honey don’t let it bother you he probably just thinks you’re cute’ but the thing is, when you tell a little girl who has rocks in her teeth and scabs on her knees that hurt and attention are the same you teach her that boys show their affection through aggression and she grows into a young woman who constantly mistakes the two because no one ever taught her the difference ‘boys will be boys’ turns into ‘that’s how he shows his love’ and bruises start to feel like the imprint of lips she goes to school with a busted mouth in high school and says she was hit with a basketball instead of his fist the one adult she tells scolds her ‘you know he loses his temper easily why the hell did you have to provoke him?’ so she shrinks folds into herself, flinches every time a man raises his voice by the time she’s 16 she’s learned her job well be quiet, be soft, be easy don’t give him a reason but for all her efforts, he still finds one ‘boys will be boys’ rings in her head ‘boys will be boys he doesn’t mean it he can’t help it’ she’s 7 years old on the playground again with a mouth full of rocks and blood that tastes like copper love because boys will be boys baby don’t you know that’s just how he shows he cares she’s 18 now and they’re drunk in the split second it takes for her words to enter his ears they’re ruined like a glass heirloom being dropped between the hands of generations she meant them to open his arms but they curl his fists and suddenly his hands are on her and her head hits the wall and all of the goddamn words in the world couldn’t save them in this moment she touches the bruise the next day boys will be boys aggression, affection, violence, love how does she separate them when she learned so early that they’re inextricably bound, tangled in a constant tug-of-war she draws tally marks on her walls ratios of kisses to bruises one entire side of her bedroom turns purple, one entire side of her body boys will be boys will be boys will be boys when she’s 20, a boy touches her hips and she jumps he asks her who the hell taught her to be scared like that and she wants to laugh doesn’t he know that boys will be boys? it took her 13 years to unlearn that lesson from the playground so I guess what I’m trying to say is i will talk until my voice is hoarse so that my little sister understands that aggression and affection are two entirely separate things baby they exist in different universes my niece can’t even speak yet but I think I’ll start with her now don’t ever accept the excuse that boys will be boys don’t ever let him put his hands on you like that if you see hate blazing in his eyes don’t you ever confuse it with love baby love won’t hurt when it comes you won’t have to hide it under long sleeves during the summer and the only reason he should ever reach out his hand is to hold yours

He'd been too late for Sin. He'd been too weak for Lou. He'd been too young for his dad. They'd all lived and loved and fallen, one by one, leaving deeper imprints on his soul each time. He couldn't change their deaths nor could he change that Sin was now in the same category as Lou and his father. People who he would have done anything for, lost to him in situations where that 'anything' had not been enough.

I was living and dying in all the fibers of what is chewed and digested and in all the fibers that absorb the sun, consuming and digesting. Under the thatched arbor of a restaurant on a river-bank, where Olivia had waited for me, our teeth began to move slowly, with equal rhythm, and our eyes stared into each other's with the intensity of serpents'—serpents concentrated in the ecstasy of swallowing each other in turn, as we were aware, in our turn, of being swallowed by the serpent that digests us all, assimilated ceaselessly in the process of ingestion and digestion, in the universal cannibalism that leaves its imprint on every amorous relationship and erases the lines between our bodies and sopa de frijoles, huachinango a la vera cru-zana, and enchiladas.

The moon shining high Listening to their story Without a sigh They scaled the peaks Imprinting their names In time and space In their love The rainbow curved in delight

We ike to think we are our own people, but sometimes it seems we are just playing out a script that was imprinted in us along ago.

What an entirely lovely and spiteful creature she was, her mortal beginnings forgotten, the imprint of a shell in the sand long erased.

Fate or imprinting, or whatever the hell my people want to call it – none of that can make me love you.” “I love you, Layla. I love your stubborn streak, the way you love Rosie, Raife, and Tati. I admire you desire for independence, and Lord knows, I love your moxie.” “Fate didn’t make me love you… you did.

No one likes a braggart, and to praise your children is to curse them with misfortune, but we admit it, if only in secret, if only to ourselves: We are proud, we are so proud of them. We've given them all we can, but our greatest gift has been to imprint upon them our own ordinariness. They may begrudge us, may think us unambitious and narrow-minded, but someday they will realize that what makes them unremarkable is what kept them alive.

Mitchell Maxwell’s Maxims • You have to create your own professional path. There’s no longer a roadmap for an artistic career. • Follow your heart and the money will follow. • Create a benchmark of your own progress. If you never look down while you’re climbing the ladder you won’t know how far you’ve come. • Don’t define success by net worth, define it by character. Success, as it’s measured by society, is a fleeting condition. • Affirm your value. Tell the world “I am an artist,” not “I want to be an artist.” • You must actively live your dream. Wishing and hoping for someday doesn’t make it happen. Get out there and get involved. • When you look into the abyss you find your character. • Young people too often let the fear of failure keep them from trying. You have to get bloody, sweaty and rejected in order to succeed. • Get your face out of Facebook and into somebody’s face. Close your e-mail and pick up the phone. Personal contact still speaks loudest. • No one is entitled to act entitled. Be willing to work hard. • If you’re going to buck the norm you’re going to have to embrace the challenges. • You have to love the journey if you’re going to work in the arts. • Only listen to people who agree with your vision. • A little anxiety is good but don’t let it become fear, fear makes you inert. • Find your own unique voice. Leave your individual imprint on the world, not a copy of someone else. • Draw strength from your mistakes; they can be your best teacher.

Describing good relatedness to someone, no matter how precisely or how often, does not inscribe it into the neural networks that inspire love. Self-help books are like car repair manuals: you can read them all day, but doing so doesn't fix a thing. Working on a car means rolling up your sleeves and getting under the hood, and you have to be willing to get dirt on your hands and grease beneath your fingernails. Overhauling emotional knowledge is no spectator sport; it demands the messy experience of yanking and tinkering that comes from a limbic bond. If someone's relationship today bear a troubled imprint, they do so because an influential relationship left its mark on a child's mind. When a limbic connection has established a neural pattern, it takes a limbic connection to revise it.

Everything you have ever done has led up to this very moment. Savor your life, the lessons, the wisdom, the failures, the victories and all the relationships that have made an imprint in your journey.

FOR THE DYING May death come gently toward you, Leaving you time to make your way Through the cold embrace of fear To the place of inner tranquillity. May death arrive only after a long life To find you at home among your own With every comfort and care you require. May your leave-taking be gracious, Enabling you to hold dignity Through awkwardness and illness. May you see the reflection Of your life’s kindness and beauty In all the tears that fall for you. As your eyes focus on each face, May your soul take its imprint, Drawing each image within As companions for the journey. May you find for each one you love A different locket of jeweled words To be worn around the heart To warm your absence. May someone who knows and loves The complex village of your heart Be there to echo you back to yourself And create a sure word-raft To carry you to the further shore. May your spirit feel The surge of true delight When the veil of the visible Is raised, and you glimpse again The living faces Of departed family and friends. May there be some beautiful surprise Waiting for you inside death, Something you never knew or felt, Which with one simple touch, Absolves you of all loneliness and loss, As you quicken within the embrace For which your soul was eternally made. May your heart be speechless At the sight of the truth Of all belief had hoped, Your heart breathless In the light and lightness Where each and everything Is at last its true self Within that serene belonging That dwells beside us On the other side Of what we see.

Let Love Move You... If you can’t stop thinking of her, it’s because her essence has left an imprint on your heart… on your soul... Don’t be afraid of this feeling; be nourished by it... Let it stir your entire being… Let it help release your greatest self... Let it inspire you to be loving… to be respectful… to be romantic… to be intelligent… to be passionate… to be a good listener… to be appreciative… Let this wonderful feeling move you to become a passionate love maker… a ravenous seducer... Do not be afraid of this deep love! Let it reveal the best of you… Let this feeling encourage you to behave in an honest and sincere manner… So that you may be more than a person she would settle for… so that you may be a person she would yearn for.

He would not live the life of his daughter by falling apart and not giving her anything but anticipated grief and collateral heartache. He wanted to imprint paternal love on her body. Maybe she would be strong and regenerated enough to stay, and maybe his intense affection would work its magic.

It's not like love at first sight, really. It's more like… gravity moves… suddenly. It's not the earth holding you here anymore, she does… You become whatever she needs you to be, whether that's a protector, or a lover, or a friend

Perhaps this is also true of places. When you are in a certain place, great love or kindness happens; it imprints itself on the ether of the place. When we pass there, hungry and needy in spirit, that loving imprint shines on us like an icon.

There is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul: we search for its outlines all over our lives. Those who are lucky enough to find it ease like water over stone, onto its fluid contours, and are home. Some find it in a place of their birth; others may leave a seaside town, parched, and find themselves refreshed in the desert. there are those born in rolling countryside who are really only at ease in the intense and busy loneliness of the city. For some, the search is for the imprint of another; a child or a mother, a grandfather or a brother, a lover, a husband, a wife, or a foe. We may go through our lives happy or unhappy, successful or unfulfilled, loved, or unloved, without ever standing cold with the shock or recognition, without ever feeling the agony as the twisted iron in our soul unlocks itself and we slip at last into place.

Love and cities are always inextricably entwined. There's no restaurant or corner store or run-down dive in any city that doesn't double as a monument for a lost love. I think that's why we always stop and stare whenever we come across a girl crying in public. We sense the imprint of a memory being pressed onto the sidewalk, onto the building contours, onto the names of the streets.

Distance, the dissonance insurmountable, would be not the end, but a magnet. When fingertips kiss, they imprint and cement something, that cannot be disintegrated. Time becomes a phantom, the wind becomes an anchor, and old dreams- blankets of warmth. Lull with me, Lady, there is no greater escape. Love and war, even when buttered on toast, still makes for the breakfast of champions.

That feeling stayed with me for months. In fact, I had grown so accustomed to that floating feeling that I started to panic at the prospect of losing it. So I began to ask friends, theologians, historians, pastors I knew, nuns I liked, *What am I going to do when it's gone?* And they knew exactly what I meant because they had either felt it themselves or read about it in great works of Christian theology. St. Augustine called it "the sweetness." Thomas Aquinas called it something mystical like "the prophetic light." But all said yes, it will go. The feelings will go. The sense of God's presence will go. There will be no lasting proof that God exists. There will be no formula for how to get it back. But they offered me this small bit of certainty, and I clung to it. When the feelings recede like the tides, they said, they will leave an imprint. I would somehow be marked by the presence of an unbidden God.

When you believe in someone you profoundly increase their ability to have faith in themselves and achieve. When you love someone you imprint on their heart something so powerful that it changes the trajectory of their life. When you do both, you set into motion, a gift to the world…because those who are believed in and loved understand the beauty of a legacy and the absolute duty of paying it forward. ~ Jason Versey

Even as good shone upon the countenance of the one, evil was written broadly and plainly on the face of the other. Evil besides (which I must still believe to be the lethal side of man) had left on that body an imprint of deformity and decay. And yet when I looked upon that ugly idol in the glass, I was conscious of no repugnance, rather of a leap of welcome. This, too, was myself. It seemed natural and human.

The left and right sides of the brain also process the imprints of the past in dramatically different ways.2 The left brain remembers facts, statistics, and the vocabulary of events. We call on it to explain our experiences and put them in order. The right brain stores memories of sound, touch, smell, and the emotions they evoke. It reacts automatically to voices, facial features, and gestures and places experienced in the past. What it recalls feels like intuitive truth—the way things are. Even as we enumerate a loved one’s virtues to a friend, our feelings may be more deeply stirred by how her face recalls the aunt we loved at age four.3 Under ordinary circumstances the two sides of the brain work together more or less smoothly, even in people who might be said to favor one side over the other. However, having one side or the other shut down, even temporarily, or having one side cut off entirely (as sometimes happened in early brain surgery) is disabling. Deactivation of the left hemisphere has a direct impact on the capacity to organize experience into logical sequences and to translate our shifting feelings and perceptions into words. (Broca’s area, which blacks out during flashbacks, is on the left side.) Without sequencing we can’t identify cause and effect, grasp the long-term effects of our actions, or create coherent plans for the future. People who are very upset sometimes say they are “losing their minds.” In technical terms they are experiencing the loss of executive functioning. When something reminds traumatized people of the past, their right brain reacts as if the traumatic event were happening in the present. But because their left brain is not working very well, they may not be aware that they are reexperiencing and reenacting the past—they are just furious, terrified, enraged, ashamed, or frozen. After the emotional storm passes, they may look for something or somebody to blame for it. They behaved the way they did way because you were ten minutes late, or because you burned the potatoes, or because you “never listen to me.” Of course, most of us have done this from time to time, but when we cool down, we hopefully can admit our mistake. Trauma interferes with this kind of awareness, and, over time, our research demonstrated why.

We are all tied to a lineage of love that has existed since time immemorial. Even if we haven't had a direct experience of that love, we know that it exists and has made an indelible imprint on our souls. It's remarkable to think that the entire span of human life exists within each one of us, going all the way back to the hands of the Creator. In our bodies we carry the blood of our ancestors and the seeds of the future generations. We are a living conduit to all life. When we contemplate the vastness of the interwoven network that we are tied to, our individual threads of life seem far less fragile. We are strengthened by who we come from and inspired by the those who will follow. ~ Sacred Instructions; Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change.

The Anne Rice books are a lot about infection. I read "Interview With the Vampire" a million times when I was in seventh and eighth grade. Also, [writing Gavriel's backstory] definitely came from those books: I sat down and reread them all and thought a lot about… the way in which vampirism is pushing away from humanity in interesting ways, and creating something new from humanity. I imprinted on those books pretty hard. Tanith Lee's "Sabella or the Blood Stone" was a big inspiration. I absolutely loved her books; when I was a kid, I wrote many bad Tanith Lee pastiches. Susie McKee Charnas' "The Vampire Tapestry." Poppy Z. Brite's "Lost Souls." Nancy Collins' "Sunglasses After Dark," which sounds like the most '80s title ever. It's about a vampire named Sonja Blue, and she goes around killing vampires. She's the only vampire who's half-alive. It's a really fun, blood-filled romp. It's very "Blade" before "Blade"--with a lady.

I'm not going to try and change you mind." "If you're here, you accept it's my choice. This is the first thing I've been in control of since the accident." "I know." And there it was. He knew it, and I knew it. There was nothing left for me to do. Do you know how hard it is to say nothing ? When every atom of you strains to do the opposite? I just tried to be, tried to absorb the man I loved through osmosis, tried to imprint what I had left of him on myself. I did not speak...

I’d spent months carefully winding my gift into a tight spool, only letting it out by inches, and only when I needed it. The strain of keeping it bound up had been a steady, constant reminder that I had to work to keep the life I’d built for myself out here. It was a muscle I’d carefully toned to withstand nearly any pressure. Letting it all go felt like shaking a bottle of soda and ripping off the cap. It fizzed and flooded and swept out of me, searching for the connections waiting to be made. I didn’t guide it, and I didn’t stop it—I don’t know if I could have if I tried. I was the burning center of a galaxy of faces, memories, loves, heartbreaks, disappointments, and dreams. It was like living dozens of different lives. I was lifted and shattered by it, how strangely beautiful it was to feel their minds linked with my own. The spinning inside my head slowed with the movement around me. I felt time hovering nearby, waiting to resume its usual tempo. The darkness slid into the edges of my vision, seeping through my mind like a drop of ink in water. But I was in control of the moment, and there was one last thing that I needed to say to them, one last idea to imprint in their minds. “I’m Green.

For some reason I just want to mention another German artist I like a lot. Imi Knoebel. He once described hiding in an attic during the bombing of Dresden and how the flashes of bombs filled a triangular shaped window in the room he was in and the experience contributed to his love of simple shapes. Is that love or merely imprinting. It was simple and strong and one is forced in a way to see the world the way it IS shaped. Art becomes a momory more than anything else. A kind of chooser. It shows how we were touched.

He began to cry then, clutching LB. The tears came easily. He had not cried tears of such distilled regret since his son had gone missing. LB was going limp, either spent, tired of fighting, or resigned to her fate. Luke hugged her so, so tight. He wanted LB to remember his touch. The warmth and love that radiated from his whole body, coupled with the sadness that she was being ripped away from him. He wanted her to take that one physical memory with her wherever she was going. The imprint of his hands on her. He wished it to be a reminder that she was a good creature, and loved, and that there were places on the continuum where love and kindness still existed, even if she did not share that world presently. She did not deserve this. But things happened. They happened.

I believe there is an impulse in each of us to make our own personal and individual mark on the world around us. The little child coming upon a stretch of clean white snow gleefully rushes forward to imprint the shapes of his feet upon it. A woman passing through a strange room pauses briefly to move an object on a table, making a slight rearrangement that her eye finds more pleasing. A boy carves his initials upon a tree. We all write our names upon the sand. All of us hope that our choices and our actions will make a little sweeter those rooms we enter, those worlds we move through, those lives we touch, those people and those places we leave behind us. It is, in a way, our small gesture toward immortality, our little message to the universe. It says, "I was here", to the ages.

It's a curse to have traumas imprinted in our wiring, to accept that what we fear and grieve and impale ourselves upon from day to day defines the way we translate the chemistry of emotions into a fixed identity wired for suffering. It's also a marvelous asset, our malleability. When the imprinting experience is loving, exciting, rich and worthy of our more expansive nature, we align pleasurably with harmony and bliss. But let's face it, we're humans. Disasters entertain our brains far more than comforts, ease and joy ever will. No one straps into the ride for the smoothness of it all going well.

Start with a girl whose blood has been steeped in Korea for generations, imprinted with Confucianism and shamanism and war. Extract her from the mountains. Plant her in wheat fields between the Red River and the Mississippi. Baptize her. Indoctrinate her. Tell her who she is. Tell her what is real. See what happens. Witness a love affair with freaks, a fascination with hermaphrodites and conjoined twins, a fixation on Pisces and pairs of opposites. Trace a dream that won't die: a vision of an old woman slumped on a bench, her spirit sitting straight out of the body, joined to the corpse at the waist.

In a sense, everything is magic: magic, for example, is the science of herbs and metals, which allows the physician to influence both malady and patient; magical, too, is illness itself, which imposes itself upon a body like a demonical possession of which sometimes the body is unwilling to be healed. The power of sounds, high or low, is magic, disturbing the soul, or possibly soothing it. Magic, above all, is the virulent force of words, which are almost always stronger than the things for which they stand; their power justifies what is said about them in the Sepher Yetsira, not to mention between us the Gospel According to Saint John. Magical is the prestige which surrounds a monarch, and which emanates from the ceremonies of the Church; and magical in their effect, likewise, are the scaffolds draped in black and the lugubrious roll of drums at executions; all such trappings transfix and terrify the gaping onlookers even more than they awe the victims. And finally, love is magic, as is hatred, too, imprinting as they do upon the brain the image of a being whom we allow to haunt us.

His body was as straight as Circe's wand; Jove might have spit out nectar from his hand. Even as delicious meat is to taste, So was his neck in touching, and surpast The white of Pelop's shoulder: I could tell ye, How smooth his breast was, and how white his belly, And whose immortal fingers did imprint That heavenly path with many a curious dint, That runs along his back; but my rude pen Can hardly blazen forth the loves of men, Much less of powerful Gods: let it suffice That my slack muse sings of Leander's eyes, Those Orient cheeks and lips, exceeding his That lept into the water for a kiss Of his own shadow, and despising many, Died ere he could enjoy the love of any.

Gift Nothing will hurt you that much despite how you feel the stress on your back shapes your insight this splendid November rain Toussaint. I find you by your marks, he says an imprint But when I summon you, I talk to—I say— my memory of your face. It’s kind of crazy to others. They’re not very interesting he says. When I first came to this country, and now I know the language I say, but I had in a dream spoken it many years previously. That is, not the language of the dead the language of France. I took one year of French in 1964 and then nothing but once, in 1977 I spoke French in a dream all night: I was in the future I moved here in 1992. Country of the more logical than I? though the people of my quartier know and like me, even as I a foreigner remain strange You do everything alone a woman said to me. There are ways to care without interfering but the French speak of anguish frequently they are conscious of emotional extremity a terrible gift. It’s all a gift, he says . . . some haven’t been opened. I’m not sure he said that it’s nearly my sixty-seventh birthday today though it’s the day of the dead hello we love you they say.

He came to believe that this was the very sort of thing that happened when you let yourself get caught in one culture's insistence that love ought to be like this or that. The key for people like him, he ultimately concluded, in this as in most matters, was to be nimble. Your privilege as an immigrant was to pick and choose your inheritance, maintain what suited you and participate merely to the extent of your patience and interest. It was not in your nature to align with one side fully, and so you couldn't help but make a life that was both apart and among. You didn't make one choice and stick with it but, rather, hundreds of minor choices with which you created a unique path through the corridors of old traditions and the avenues of the new. And you cultivated this dividedness because you carried always the imprint of that first move -- the decision to leave home. Indeed, this initiating choice, more than anything, was your true inheritance.

You are mine for all eternity, Savannah, until we grow weary of this existence and choose to go together to the next." Reluctantly, he freed his body from hers,bent hif head to remove the thin triail of red marring her skin. Gregori settled her into him so that his head rested beside her breast. Her arms crept around his damp hair, cradling him to her, the sleep of their people calling to her. He shifted her slight body so that he could drape one leg over her thighs possessively, so that his hands could shape the length of her body at will,know it was imprinted there in the soil beside his. The chamber door slid noiselessly shut to seal them inside at his thought. The safeguards were many and all of them deadly.Anyone disturbing their rest would be in mortal peril.Gregori stroked her long hair, contended. At peace. "You are so small, ma petite, to bring such pleasure to a man." The warmth of his breath teased her nipple, and his tongue followed in a slow,leisurely caress. "I have made love to you each time I have taken you into my arms. There can be no other for either of us,Savannah." She stirred with drowsy contentment, the slight movement bringing her breast against his mouth. Her hands stroked his hair gently. "I am not the one who worries, lifemate.I know there is no other." His tongue made another lazy, contented curl around her creamy skin. "One who has gone centuries in utter darkness takes a long time to believe he will not lose the light.Go to sleep, Savannah, safe in my arms.Let the soil heal both of us and bring us peace, as Julian knew it would." She was silent for a moment, but his mouth feeding at her breast was causing little aftershocks, rushes of liquid heat. "I will if you behave.

They dream of the happiness of stretching out one's legs and of the relief one feels after going to the toilet. In Orotukan the earth thaws only in the summer and only to the depth of three feet—and only then can they bury the bones of those who died during the winter. And you have the right to arrange your own life under the blue sky and the hot sun, to get a drink of water, to stretch, to travel wherever you like without a convoy [escort]. So what's this about unwiped feet? And what's this about a mother-in-law? What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I'll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusory—property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life—don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides. If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart—and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, you simply do not know: it may be your last act before your arrest, and that will be how you are imprinted in their memory!

I was still walking behind Mrs. Haze through the dining room when, beyond it, there came a sudden burst of greenery – “the piazza," sang out my leader, and then, without the least warning, a blue sea-wave swelled under my heart and, from a mat in a pool of sun, half-naked, kneeling, turning about on her knees, there was my Riviera love peering at me over dark glasses. It was the same child-the same frail, honey-hued shoulders, the same silky supple bare back, the same chestnut head of hair. A polka-dotted black kerchief tied around her chest hid from my aging ape eyes, but not from the gaze of young memory, the juvenile breasts I had fondled one immortal day. And, as if I were the fairy-tale nurse of some little princess (lost, kidnapped, discovered in gypsy rags through which her nakedness smiled at the king and his hounds), I recognized the tiny dark-brown mole on her side. With awe and delight (the king crying for joy, the trumpets blaring, the nurse drunk) I saw again her lovely indrawn abdomen where my southbound mouth had briefly paused; and those puerile hips on which I had kissed the crenulated imprint left by the band of her shorts – that last mad immortal day behind the "Roches Roses." The twenty-five years I had lived since then, tapered to a palpitating point, and vanished.

CYRANO: Thy name is in my heart as in a sheep-bell, And as I ever tremble, thinking of thee, Ever the bell shakes, ever thy name ringeth! All things of thine I mind, for I love all things; I know that last year on the twelfth of May-month, To walk abroad, one day you changed your hair-plaits! I am so used to take your hair for daylight That,--like as when the eye stares on the sun's disk, One sees long after a red blot on all things-- So, when I quit thy beams, my dazzled vision Sees upon all things a blonde stain imprinted. ROXANE (agitated): Why, this is love indeed!. . . CYRANO: Ay, true, the feeling Which fills me, terrible and jealous, truly Love,--which is ever sad amid its transports! Love,--and yet, strangely, not a selfish passion! I for your joy would gladly lay mine own down, --E'en though you never were to know it,--never! --If but at times I might--far off and lonely,-- Hear some gay echo of the joy I bought you! Each glance of thine awakes in me a virtue,-- A novel, unknown valor. Dost begin, sweet, To understand? So late, dost understand me? Feel'st thou my soul, here, through the darkness mounting? Too fair the night! Too fair, too fair the moment! That I should speak thus, and that you should hearken! Too fair! In moments when my hopes rose proudest, I never hoped such guerdon. Naught is left me But to die now! Have words of mine the power To make you tremble,--throned there in the branches? Ay, like a leaf among the leaves, you tremble! You tremble! For I feel,--an if you will it, Or will it not,--your hand's beloved trembling Thrill through the branches, down your sprays of jasmine! (He kisses passionately one of the hanging tendrils.) ROXANE: Ay! I am trembling, weeping!--I am thine! Thou hast conquered all of me! --Cyrano de Bergerac III. 7

Next week is Beltane,” she reminded him. “Do you suppose we will make it through the wedding this time?” “Not if Gideon says you cannot get out of this bed,” he countered sternly. “Absolutely not!” she burst out, making him wince and cover the ear she’d been too close to. She immediately regretted her thoughtlessness, making a sad sound before reaching to kiss the ear she had offended with quiet gentleness. Jacob extricated himself from her hold enough to allow himself to turn and face her. “Okay, explain what you meant,” he said gently. “I refuse to wait another six months. We are getting married on Beltane, come hell or . . . necromancers . . . or . . . the creature from the Black Lagoon. There is no way Corrine is going to be allowed to get married without me getting married, too. I refuse to listen to her calling me the family hussy for the rest of the year.” “What does it matter what she says?” Jacob sighed as he reached to touch the soft contours of her face. “You and I are bonded in a way that transcends marriage already. Is that not what is important?” “No. What’s important is the fact that I am going to murder the sister I love if she doesn’t quit. And she will not quit until I shut her up either with a marriage or a murder weapon. Understand?” Clearly, by his expression, Jacob did not understand. “Thank Destiny all I have is a brother,” he said dryly. “I have been inundated with people tied into knots over one sister or another for the past weeks.” “You mean Legna. Listen, it’s not her fault if everyone has their shorts in a twist because of who her Imprinted mate is! Frankly, I think she and Gideon make a fabulous couple. Granted, a little too gorgeously ‘King and Queen of the Prom’ perfect for human eyes to bear looking at for long, but fabulous just the same.” Jacob blinked in confusion as he tried to decipher his fiancée’s statement. Even after all these months, she still came out with unique phraseologies that totally escaped his more classic comprehension of the English language. But he had gotten used to just shrugging his confusion off, blaming it on the fact that English wasn’t his first, second, or third language, so it was to be expected. “Anyway,” she went on, “Noah and Hannah need to chill. You saw Legna when she came to visit yesterday. If a woman could glow, she was as good as radioactive.” She smiled sweetly at him. “That means,” she explained, “that she looks as brilliantly happy as you make me feel.” “I see,” he chuckled. “Thank you for the translation.” He reached his arms around her, drawing her body up to his as close as he could considering the small matter of a fetal obstacle. He kissed her inviting mouth until she was breathless and glowing herself. “I thought I would be kind to you,” she explained with a laugh against his mouth. “You, my love, are all heart.” “And you are all pervert. Jacob!” She laughed as she swatted one of his hands away from intimate places, only to be shanghaied by another. “What would Gideon say?” “He better not say anything, because if he did that would mean he was in here while you are naked. And that, little flower, would probably cost him his vocal chords in any event.” “Oh. Well . . . when you put it that way . . .