Manny

“I felt a fear I’d had before: I needed the people in my life more than they needed me. This fear made me want to be useful and polite and good, so no one would ever tire of me; I had noticed the way some people, like my brother and father, drained the around them. And then I saw the problem from a different angle, in a different light, blinding and new: I had to care less about people. I had to separate myself from others. Let them need and miss me. Nothing exhausted me more than trying not to care. It was an effort, always. But it was necessary.”
― Santiago Jose Sanchez, Hombrecito

“To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation...Love is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world for himself for another's sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“It's not the changes that will break your heart; it's that tug of familiarity.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

“Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it's true love, and the answer is this: when the pain doesn't fade and the scars don't heal, and it's too damned late.”
― Jonathan Tropper, The Book of Joe