Steinbeck's letter to his lovestuck son

There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had...

But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it — and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone — there is no possible harm in saying so — only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another — but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good...

And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Steinbeck (Nov. 10  1958)

Source: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/01/12/john-steinbeck-on-love-1958/

This is why I love you

"Carl and I knew we were the beneficiaries of chance, that pure chance could be so kind that we could find one another in the vastness of space and the immensity of time. We knew that every moment should be cherished as the precious and unlikely coincidence that it was.” ~ Annie Druyan

To one who asks me what is love

I have phrases and whole pages memorized,

but nothing can be told of love.

You must wait until you and I

are living together.

In the conversation we'll have 

then...be patient...then.

- Rumi

Knowing

I know. I know that I shall never again meet anything or anybody who will inspire me with passion. You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it. I know I'll never jump again...

....
But I probably will.

Is that resilience? Or plain stupidity?

Godard-speak

When we talked,
...........................I talked about me,
.........................................................you talked about you,
..............................................................................................when
we should have talked about
...........................................each other.

Barathi

"Paartha idathil ellam unnai polave paavai theriyadhu dhi"
I hate Barathi for writing that. He stole it from me.