Therefore dear Sir love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth in which of course you cant take anyone with you and be gentle with those who stay behind be confident and calm in front of them and dont torment them with your doubts and dont frighten them with your faith or joy which they wouldnt be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them which doesnt necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again when you see them love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and dont expect any understanding but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.

Watch out for intellectbecause it knows so much it knows nothingand leaves you hanging upside downmouthing knowledge as your heartfalls out of your mouth.

I will love you always. When this red hair is white I will still love you. When the smooth softness of youth is replaced by the delicate softness of age I will still want to touch your skin. When your face is full of the lines of every smile you have ever smiled of every surprise I have seen flash through your eyes when every tear you have ever cried has left its mark upon your faceI will treasure you all the more because I was there to see it all. I will share your life with you Meredith and I will love you until the last breath leaves your body or mine.

Stop fighting me he said trying to pull on the arm he held.He was in a precarious position himself straddling the rail as he tried to lean over far enough to get me and actually hold onto me.Let go of me I yelled back.But he was too strong and managed to haul most of me over the rail enough so that I wasnt in total danger of falling again.See heres the thing. In that moment before I let go I really had been contemplating my death. Id come to terms with it and accepted it. I also however had known Dimitri might do something exactly like this. He was just that fast and that good. That was why I was holding my stake in the hand that was dangling free.I looked him in the eye. I will always love you.Then I plunged the stake into his chest.It wasnt as precise a blow as I would have liked not with the skilled way he was dodging. I struggled to get the stake in deep enough to his heart unsure if I could do it from this angle. Then his struggles stopped. His eyes stared at me stunned and his lips parted almost into a smile albeit a grisly and pained one.Thats what I was supposed to say. . . he gasped out.Those were his last words.

love Ive come to understand is more than three words mumbled before bedtime.

I fell in love with her when we were together then fell deeper in love with her in the years we were apart.

I wont ever leave you even though youre always leaving me.

You cant measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange.

Let there be spaces in your togetherness And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each others cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous but let each one of you be alone Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts but not into each others keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together yet not too near together For the pillars of the temple stand apart And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each others shadow.

Love is a temporary madness it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness it is not excitement it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No dont blush I am telling you some truths. That is just being in love which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.