β
When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
These violent delights have violent ends
And in their triumph die, like fire and powder,
Which as they kiss consume. The sweetest honey
Is loathsome in his own deliciousness
And in the taste confounds the appetite.
Therefore love moderately; long love doth so;
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Don't waste your love on somebody, who doesn't value it.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
My only love sprung from my only hate!
Too early seen unknown, and known too late!
Prodigious birth of love it is to me,
That I must love a loathed enemy.
β
β
William Shakespeare
β
thus with a kiss I die
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty till this night.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet)
β
For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Do not swear by the moon, for she changes constantly. then your love would also change.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake- its everything except what it is! (Act 1, scene 1)
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet)
β
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
O teach me how I should forget to think (1.1.224)
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father refuse thy name, thou art thyself thou not a montegue, what is montegue? tis nor hand nor foot nor any other part belonging to a man
What is in a name?
That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,
So Romeo would were he not Romeo called retain such dear perfection to which he owes without that title,
Romeo, Doth thy name!
And for that name which is no part of thee, take all thyself.
β
β
William Shakespeare
β
Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?
SAMPSON [Aside to Gregory]: Is the law of our side, if I say ay?
GREGORY [Aside to Sampson]: No.
SAMPSON: No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand.
O, that I were a glove upon that hand
That I might touch that cheek!
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs;
Being purg'd, a fire sparkling in lovers' eyes;
Being vex'd, a sea nourish'd with lovers' tears;
What is it else? A madness most discreet,
A choking gall, and a preserving sweet.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-browed night;
Give me my Romeo; and, when I shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night...
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
I defy you, stars.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Bono met his wife in high school," Park says.
"So did Jerry Lee Lewis," Eleanor answers.
"Iβm not kidding," he says.
"You should be," she says, "weβre sixteen."
"What about Romeo and Juliet?"
"Shallow, confused," then dead.
"I love you, Park says.
"Wherefore art thou," Eleanor answers.
"Iβm not kidding," he says.
"You should be.
β
β
Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park)
β
Go wisely and slowly. Those who rush stumble and fall.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Women may fall when there's no strength in men.
Act II
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet (Arden Shakespeare Second))
β
There's an old saying that applies to me: you can't lose a game if you don't play the game. (Act 1, scene 4)
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet)
β
Oh, I am fortune's fool!
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
You are a lover. Borrow Cupid's wings
and soar with them above a common bound.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
O serpent heart, hid with a flowering face!
Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
Beautiful tyrant! fiend angelical!
Dove-feather'd raven! wolvish-ravening lamb!
Despised substance of divinest show!
Just opposite to what thou justly seem'st,
A damned saint, an honourable villain!
O nature, what hadst thou to do in hell;
When thou didst bower the spirit of a fiend
In mortal paradise of such sweet flesh?
Was ever book containing such vile matter
So fairly bound? O that deceit should dwell
In such a gorgeous palace!
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
O, here
Will I set up my everlasting rest,
And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars
From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you
The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss
A dateless bargain to engrossing death!
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
I dreamt a dream tonight.
Mercutio: And so did I.
Romeo: Well, what was yours?
Mercutio: That dreamers often lie.
Romeo: In bed asleep while they do dream things true.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Imagine if [Juliet] woke up and he was still alive, but..." She swallowed, waiting out a tremor in her voice. "But [Romeo] had killed her whole family. And burned her city. And killed and enslaved her people.
β
β
Laini Taylor (Days of Blood & Starlight (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #2))
β
Love moderately. Long love doth so.
Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
*Love each other in moderation. That is the key to long-lasting love. Too fast is as bad as too slow.*
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
turn him into stars and form a constellation in his image. His face will make the heavens so beautiful that the world will fall in love with the night and forget about the garish sun.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.
The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love,
And the continuance of their parents' rage,
Which, but their children's end, nought could remove,
Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage;
The which if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
A glooming peace this morning with it brings;
The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head:
Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things;
Some shall be pardon'd, and some punished:
For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Peace? I hate the word as I hate hell and all Montagues.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
If it had been easy for Romeo to get to Juliet, nobody would have cared. Same goes for Cyrano and Don Quixote and Gatsby and their respective paramours. What captures the imagination is watching men throw themselves at a brick wall over and over again, and wondering if this is the time that they won't be able to get back up.
β
β
Jodi Picoult (Vanishing Acts)
β
Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness, serious vanity,
Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Under loveβs heavy burden do I sink.
And, to sink in it, should you burden love;
Too great oppression for a tender thing.
Is love a tender thing? it is too rough,
Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.
If love be rough with you, be rough
with love;
Prick love for pricking, and you beat love down.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet)
β
Tis an ill cook that cannot lick his own fingers.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Eyes, look your last!
Arms, take your last embrace!
And, lips, oh you the doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss a dateless bargain to engrossing death!
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Juliet:
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
Romeo:
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
Juliet:
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
Romeo:
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
Juliet:
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.
Romeo:
Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take.
Thus from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged.
Juliet:
Then have my lips the sin that they have took.
Romeo:
Sin from thy lips? O trespass sweetly urged!
Give me my sin again.
Juliet:
You kiss by the book.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
I swear, Six is going to kill us, or worse, maybe she's about to be killed by a swarm of Mogs and we're here lying in the grass about to go through a scene from Romeo and Juliet.
β
β
Pittacus Lore (The Power of Six (Lorien Legacies, #2))
β
What's in a name, anyway? That which we call a nose by any other name would still smell.
β
β
Adam Long (The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (abridged))
β
This is why my betrayal was so terrible. Because you believed me incapable of hurting you, and yet I did.
β
β
Chloe Gong (These Violent Delights (These Violent Delights, #1))
β
One fire burns out another's burning,
One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Itβs easy for someone to joke about scars if theyβve never been cut.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
O! she doth teach the torches to burn bright
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.
- Romeo -
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Is love a tender thing? It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
How art thou out of breath when thou hast breath
To say to me that thou art out of breath?
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
We burn daylight.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Out of her favour, where I am in love.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
The sweetest honey is loathsome in its own deliciousness. And in the taste destroys the appetite. Therefore, love moderately.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
I donβt remember Romeo being this pushy with Juliet!β.....He arched his eyebrows meaningfully. βAnd look at how that worked out for them. My way is betterβless death, more orgasms.
β
β
Tillie Cole (Sweet Home (Sweet Home, #1))
β
Romeo and Juliet is synonymous with βromanceβ in our culture today. It is seen as the love story in English-speaking culture, an emotional ideal to live up to. Yet when you really get down to what happens in the story, these kids are absolutely out of their fucking minds. And they just killed themselves to prove it!
β
β
Mark Manson (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life)
β
I must be gone and live, or stay and die.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
She will fight for light, and he for dark,
Battling through the ages for loves sweet spark.
Wherever two souls adore truly, you will find them, lo,
The brave Juliet and the wicked Romeo.
β
β
Stacey Jay (Juliet Immortal (Juliet Immortal, #1))
β
Educated men are so impressive!
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath hath had no power yet upon thy beauty.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
He jests at scars that never felt a wound.
But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she.
Be not her maid since she is envious.
Her vestal livery is but sick and green,
And none but fools do wear it. Cast it off!
It is my lady. Oh, it is my love.
Oh, that she knew she were!
She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that?
Her eye discourses. I will answer it.β
I am too bold. 'Tis not to me she speaks.
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars
As daylight doth a lamp. Her eye in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.
See how she leans her cheek upon her hand.
Oh, that I were a glove upon that hand
That I might touch that cheek!
β
β
William Shakespeare
β
think about it: Romeo and Juliet bucked the system, and look where it got them. Superman has the hots for Lois Lane, when the better match, of course, would be with Wonder Woman.
β
β
Jodi Picoult (My Sisterβs Keeper)
β
Give me my sin again.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Alas, that love, so gentle in his view,
Should be so tyrannous and rough in proof!
*Itβs sad. Love looks like a nice thing, but itβs actually very rough when you experience it.*
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
What sadness lengthens Romeo's hours?
Romeo: Not having that, which, having, makes them short.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
O, swear not by the moon, thβ inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circle orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Romeo, Romeo. Wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books,
But love from love, toward school with heavy looks.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Take it in what sense thou wilt.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,
Which is as thin of substance as the air,
And more inconstant than the wind, who woos
Even now the frozen bosom of the north,
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence,
Turning his side to the dew-dropping south.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet)
β
One pain is lessened by anotherβs anguish. ... Take thou some new infection to thy eye, And the rank poison of the old will die.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Not belonging is a terrible feeling. It feels awkward and it hurts, as if you were wearing someone else's shoes.
β
β
Phoebe Stone (The Romeo and Juliet Code (Felicity Bathburn, #1))
β
Itβs awful, telling it like this, isnβt it? As though we didnβt know the ending. As though it could have another ending. Itβs like watching Romeo drink poison. Every time you see it you get fooled into thinking his girlfriend might wake up and stop him. Every single time you see it you want to shout, 'You stupid ass, just wait a minute,' and sheβll open her eyes! 'Oi, you, you twat, open your eyes, wake up! Donβt die this time!' But they always do.
β
β
Elizabeth Wein (Code Name Verity (Code Name Verity, #1))
β
He that is strucken blind can not forget the precious treasure of his eyesight lost.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied,
And vice sometime by action dignified.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet)
β
They had become a fixed star in the shifting firmament of the high school's relationships, the acknowledged Romeo and Juliet. And she knew with sudden hatefulness that there was one couple like them in every white suburban high school in America.
β
β
Stephen King (Carrie)
β
Ay me! sad hours seem long.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
And where two raging fires meet together, they do consume the thing that feeds their fury.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
true apothecary thy drugs art quick
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Itβs just that since the moment I realized what healing you meant, or what I thought it meant, I never thought Iβd face a day without you. That Iβd never have to worry about going on if you werenβt there. And Iβm not trying to make this into some kind of Romeo and Juliet bullshit, but now I know thereβs a chance of that and it . . . it fucking terrifies me, Kat. It really does.
β
β
Jennifer L. Armentrout (Opposition (Lux, #5))
β
If Romeo had never met Juliet, maybe they both would have still been alive, but what they would have been alive for is the question Shakespeare wants us to answer.
β
β
Gary D. Schmidt (The Wednesday Wars)
β
Iβll look to like, if looking liking move; But no more deep will I endart mine eye than your consent gives strength to make it fly.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo & Juliet)
β
These sudden joys have sudden endings. They burn up in victory like fire and gunpowder.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Great love, you believe, carries the seeds of great sorrow.
β
β
Anne Fortier (Juliet)
β
It only took Romeo one look at Juliet and his fate was sealed. Maybe Iβm just like my namesake, and maybe youβre just like yours.
β
β
Tillie Cole (Sweet Home (Sweet Home, #1))
β
A plague on both your houses.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Juliet and Romeo be damned, you can't be in love until you've flossed your teeth next to the person at least three hundred times...
β
β
Marisha Pessl (Special Topics in Calamity Physics)
β
Flowers are the Romeos and the Juliets of the nature!
β
β
Mehmet Murat ildan
β
You've never heard of the Trickster King?" Puck asked, shocked.
The girls shook their heads.
"The Prince of Fairies? Robin Goodfellow? The Imp?"
"Do you work for Santa?" Daphne asked.
"I'm a fairy, not an elf!" Puck roared. "You really don't know who I am! Doesn't anyone read the classics anymore? Dozens of writers have warned about me. I'm in the most famous of all of William Shakespeare's plays."
"I don't remember any Puck in Romeo and Juliet," Sabrina muttered, feeling a little amused at how the boy was reacting to his non-celebrity.
"Besides Romeo and Juliet!" Puck shouted. "I'm the star of a Midsummer Night's Dream!"
"Congratulation," Sabrina said flatly. "Never read it.
β
β
Michael Buckley (The Fairy-Tale Detectives (The Sisters Grimm, #1))
β
I have a soul of lead
So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
Well, in that hit you miss. She'll not be hit
With Cupid's arrow. She hath Dian's wit,
And, in strong proff of chastity well armed,
From Love's weak childish bow she lives uncharmed.
She will not stay the siege of loving terms,
Nor bide th' encounter of assailing eyes,
Nor ope her lap to saint-seducing gold.
O, she is rich in beauty; only poor
That, when she dies, with dies her store.
Act 1,Scene 1, lines 180-197
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
To move is to stir, and to be valiant is to stand; therefore, if tou art mov'd, thou runst away. (To be angry is to move, to be brave is to stand still. Therefore, if you're angry, you'll run away.)
β
β
William Shakespeare
β
Here is something that Peach, one of the Casserole Queens, says about men and women and love. You know that scene in Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo is standing on the ground looking longingly at Juliet on the balcony above him? One of the most romantic moments in all of literary history? Peach says there's no way that Romeo was standing down there to profess his undying devotion. The truth, Peach says, is that Romeo was just trying to look up Juliet's skirt.
β
β
Deb Caletti (Honey, Baby, Sweetheart)
β
It is my lady. O, it is my love!
O, that she knew she were!
She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that?
Her eye discourses; I will answer it.
I am too bold. βTis not to me she speaks.
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven,
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those
stars
β
β
William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)
β
We try, we struggle, all the time to find words to express our love. The quality, the quantity, certain that no two people have experienced it before in the history of creation. Perhaps Catherine and Heathcliff, perhaps Romeo and Juliet, maybe Tristan and Isolde, maybe Hero and Leander, but these are just characters, make-believe. We have known each other forever, since before conception even. We remember playing together in a playpen, crossing paths at FAO Schwarz. We remember meeting in front of the Holy Temple in the days before Christ, we remember greeting each other at the Forum, at the Parthenon, on passing ships as Christopher Columbus sailed to America. We have survived pogrom together, we have died in Dachau together, we have been lynched by the Ku Klux Klan together. There has been cancer, polio, the bubonic plague, consumption, morphine addiction. We have had children together, we have been children together, we were in the womb together. Our history is so deep and wide and long, we have known each other a million years. And we don't know how to express this kind of love, this kind of feeling. I get paralyzed sometimes. One day, we are in the shower and I want to say to him, I could be submerged in sixty feet of water right now, never drowning, never even fearing drowning, knowing I would always be safe with you here, knowing that it would be ok to die as long as you are here. I want to say this but don't.
β
β
Elizabeth Wurtzel (Prozac Nation)
β
I said
βI love you so much itβs killing meβ
and you kept saying sorry
so I stopped explaining
for it never made sense to you
what always did to me
to let what you love
kill you
and never regret.
As Romeo is dying Juliet says
βI am willing to die to remain by your sideβ
and love was never a static place of rest
but the last second of euphoria
while throwing yourself out from a 20 store window
to be able to say
βI flew before I hit the groundβ,
and it was glorious.
Donβt be sorry.
The fall was beautiful, dear.
The crash was beautiful.
β
β
Charlotte Eriksson
β
There are a million things in this world that can end you, that can in one second obliterate the life you work so hard to keep alive. Our lives are structured around not dying. Eating, sleeping, looking both ways before you cross the street. It's all, all of it, to keep us safe from the thing that we know is going to get us anyway. It doesn't even make sense, if you think about it. It's the world's biggest joke. Our entire lives are set up around not dying, knowing all the while that it's the one thing we can't avoid.
β
β
Rebecca Serle (When You Were Mine)
β
I used to think Romeo and Juliet was the greatest love story ever written. But now that Iβm middle-aged, I know better. Oh, Romeo certainly thinks he loves his Juliet. Driven by hormones, he unquestionably lusts for her. But if he loves her, itβs a shallow love. You want proof?β Cagney didnβt wait for Dr. Victor to say yay or nay.
βSoon after meeting her for the first time, he realizes he forgot to ask her for her name. Can true love be founded upon such shallow acquaintance? I donβt think so. And at the end, when he thinks sheβs dead, he finds no comfort in living out the remainder of his life within the paradigm of his love, at least keeping alive the memory of what they had briefly shared, even if it was no more than illusion, or more accurately, hormonal.
βThose of us watching events unfold from the darkness know she merely lies in slumber. But does he seek the reason for her life-like appearance? No. Instead he accuses Death of amorousness, convinced that the βlean abhorred monsterβ endeavors to keep Juliet in her present state, her cheeks flushed, so that she might cater to his own dissolute desires. But does Romeo hold her in his arms one last time and feel the warmth of her blood still coursing through her veins? Does he pinch her to see if she might awaken? Hold a mirror to her nose to see if her breath fogs it? Once, twice, three times a βno.ββ
Cagney sighed, listened to the leather creak as he shifted his weight in his chair.
βNo,β he repeated. βHis alleged love is so superficial and selfish that he seeks to escape the pain of loss by taking his own life. Thatβs not love, but obsessive infatuation. Had they wedβJuliet bearing many children, bonding, growing together, the masks of the star-struck teens they once were long ago cast away, basking in the comforting campfire of a love born of a lifetime together, not devoured by the raging forest fire of youth that consumes everything and leaves behind nothingβand she died of natural causes, would Romeo have been so moved to take his own life, or would he have grieved properly, for her loss and not just his own?
β
β
J. Conrad Guest (The Cobb Legacy)
β
When my husband had an affair with someone else I watched his eyes glaze over when we ate dinner together and I heard him singing to himself without me, and when he tended the garden it was not for me.
He was courteous and polite; he enjoyed being at home, but in the fantasy of his home I was not the one who sat opposite him and laughed at his jokes. He didn't want to change anything; he liked his life. The only thing he wanted to change was me.
It would have been better if he had hated me, or if he had abused me, or if he had packed his new suitcases and left.
As it was he continued to put his arm round me and talk about being a new wall to replace the rotten fence that divided our garden from his vegetable patch. I knew he would never leave our house. He had worked for it.
Day by day I felt myself disappearing. For my husband I was no longer a reality, I was one of the things around him. I was the fence which needed to be replaced. I watched myself in the mirror and saw that I was mo longer vivid and exciting. I was worn and gray like an old sweater you can't throw out but won't put on.
He admitted he was in love with her, but he said he loved me.
Translated, that means, I want everything. Translated, that means, I don't want to hurt you yet. Translated, that means, I don't know what to do, give me time.
Why, why should I give you time? What time are you giving me? I am in a cell waiting to be called for execution.
I loved him and I was in love with him. I didn't use language to make a war-zone of my heart.
'You're so simple and good,' he said, brushing the hair from my face.
He meant, Your emotions are not complex like mine. My dilemma is poetic.
But there was no dilemma. He no longer wanted me, but he wanted our life
Eventually, when he had been away with her for a few days and returned restless and conciliatory, I decided not to wait in my cell any longer. I went to where he was sleeping in another room and I asked him to leave. Very patiently he asked me to remember that the house was his home, that he couldn't be expected to make himself homeless because he was in love.
'Medea did,' I said, 'and Romeo and Juliet and Cressida, and Ruth in the Bible.'
He asked me to shut up. He wasn't a hero.
'Then why should I be a heroine?'
He didn't answer, he plucked at the blanket.
I considered my choices.
I could stay and be unhappy and humiliated.
I could leave and be unhappy and dignified.
I could Beg him to touch me again.
I could live in hope and die of bitterness.
I took some things and left. It wasn't easy, it was my home too.
I hear he's replaced the back fence.
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Jeanette Winterson (Sexing the Cherry)
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Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still,
Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will!
Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here?
Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.
Hereβs much to do with hate, but more with love.
Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! Serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Dost thou not laugh?
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William Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)