Jan

“Just as I was flung over the threshold, I embraced Grigoire the Swiss Fiancé in a rugger grip, determined that smug cockatoo was coming with me...Stone steps and icy pavements bruised my own flesh as black as his, banged my elbows and hips just as hard, but at least mine was not the only ruined evening in Bruges, and I yelled, kicking his ribs once for each word, before half-running, half-hobbling off on my whacked ankle, 'Love hurts!'
”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Yes. What is it, guilt, revenge, love, what?”
I swallowed. “I live alone.”
"And your point is?”
"You have the Pack. You’re surrounded by people who would fall over themselves for the pleasure of your company. I have no one. My parents are dead, my entire family is gone. I have no friends. Except Jim, and that’s more of a working relationship than anything else. I have no lover. I can’t even have a pet, because I’m not at the house often enough to keep it from starving. When I come crawling home, bleeding and filthy and exhausted, the house is dark and empty. Nobody keeps the porch light on for me. Nobody hugs me and says, ‘Hey, I’m glad you made it. I’m glad you’re okay. I was worried.’ Nobody cares if I live or die. Nobody makes me coffee, nobody holds me before I go to bed, nobody fixes my medicine when I’m sick. I’m by myself.”
― Ilona Andrews, Magic Burns

“He was a romantic in his own harsh way…yet he was also realist enough to know that some times love actually did conquer all.”
― Stephen King, The Drawing of the Three

“Let me not then die ingloriously and without a struggle, but let me first do some great thing that shall be told among men hereafter.”
― Homer, The Iliad