caring about something

No, the jungle wasn't evil. It was indifferent. So, too, was the world. Evil then, must be the negation of something man had added to the world. Ultimately, it was caring about something that made the world liable to evil. Caring. And then the caring gets torn asunder. Everybody dies, but not everybody cares. It occurred to Mellas that he could create the possibility of good or evil through caring. He could nullify the indifferent world. But in doing so, he opened himself up to the pain of watching it get blown away.

Matterhorn - A Novel of the Vietnam War

Karl Marlantes

your imagination really is running away with you

"My dear Maximilien," Valentine said ... "You will not love me for very long. A man who makes such poetry will never be happy, languishing in such a banal passion as ours."

The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas

without really knowing me

I told Magdalena everything.
I had to. Watching her love me without really knowing me was like watching her love someone else, and the jealousy was killing me.

Beat The Reaper
Josh Bazell

with unexpected significance

She lived right around the corner, so we didn't have to walk far... As it was, the walk lasted maybe a minute. Even so, I remember feeling like Wordsworth on the verge of a sublime experience, one of his "spots of time." I was alert and deeply connected to my surroundings, the familiar world seemed to vibrate with unexpected significance. The revelation it brought me wasn't grand or romantic, though - it was just a simple sense of belonging. I'm here, I thought. I'm happy.

Joe College
Tom Perrota

For A.K. and Treckles.

...and so the lion fell in love with the lamb.

Twilight
Stephanie Meyer

To be loved means

To be loved means to be consumed in flames. To love is to give light with inexhaustible oil. To be loved is to pass away; to love is to endure.

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge [excerpt]

Rainer Maria Rilke

For A.K.

98 F. Supp 203

I wanted to want something

I wanted to want something as much as people wanted these plants, but it isn't part of my constitution. I think people my age are embarrassed by too much enthusiasm and believe that too much passion about anything is naive. I suppose I do have one un-embarrassing passion- I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately.

The Orchid Thief
Susan Orlean

She was gone

She was gone and the coldness of it was her final gift.

The Road
Cormac McCarthy

so Edgar didn't rush off

If age teaches you anything, then one of the lessons is certainly not to hurry if you're already late...

Day Watch
Sergei Lukyanenko

In the end,

In the end, it wasn’t death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life.

The Virgin Suicides
Jeffrey Eugenides

a second chance

She closed the door behind him but he didn't hear it lock.

Cold Pursuit

T. Jefferson Parker

the vehicle that drove my spirit forward

...my father used to say, "If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen. If there is nothing good left in the destiny of a person, he or she will die." I thought about these words during my journey, and they kept me moving even when I didn't know where I was going.

A Long Way Gone
Ishmael Beah

So you could be with me?

And then later in the darkness: Can I ask you something?
Yes. Of course you can.
What would you do if I died?
If you died I would want to die too.
So you could be with me?
Yes. So I could be with you.
Okay.

The Road
Cormac McCarthy

interior rules

...for a moment I thought I loved her. But I am slow-thinking and full of interior rules that act as brakes on my desires...

The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald

hopelessly I should add

All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other's soul and flesh...

Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov

I love the recklessness of faith.

First you leap and then you grow wings.

Credo
William Sloane Coffin

in themselves

Detachment is a rare virtue, and very few people find it lovable, either in themselves or others.

Gaudy Night
Dorothy Sayers

why?

I hadn't so much forgot as I couldn't bring myself to remember.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou

outside. now.

The air smelled like rain waiting to happen.

From the Corner of His Eye
Dean Koontz