129 Unrequited Love Quotes

Unrequited love can evoke a complex tapestry of emotions, spinning tales of longing, hope, and heartache. It's a universal experience, yet uniquely personal, as each story unfolds with its own shades of desire and unfulfilled dreams. For those who have felt that tender ache of loving without reciprocation, words can offer solace and understanding. In our carefully curated collection of 129 Unrequited Love Quotes, you'll find expressions of deep emotion that resonate with your silent heartbeats. Whether you're seeking comfort, reflection, or simply the knowing that you are not alone, these quotes provide a voice to the unspoken chapters of your heart's journey. Join us as we explore the poignant beauty and profound depth of unreturned affection.

1. “If music be the food of love, play on;Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,The appetite may sicken, and so die.That strain again! it had a dying fall:O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,That breathes upon a bank of violets,Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,That, notwithstanding thy capacityReceiveth as the sea, nought enters there,Of what validity and pitch soe'er,But falls into abatement and low price,Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancyThat it alone is high fantastical.” - William Shakespeare

2. “First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons — but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world — a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring — this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else — but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.” - Carson McCullers

3. “Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow.” - J.M. Barrie

4. “Love Jo all your days, if you choose, but don't let it spoil you, for it's wicked to throw away so many good gifts because you can't have the one you want.” - Louisa May Alcott

5. “Snape's patronus was a doe,' said Harry, 'the same as my mother's because he loved her for nearly all of his life, from when they were children.” - J.K. Rowling

6. “In the first place, his startling likeness to Catherine, connected him fearfully with her. That, however, which you may suppose the most potent to arrest my imagination, is actually the least – for what is not connected with her to me? and what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped on the flags! In every cloud, in every tree – filling the air at night, and caught by glimpses in every object, by day I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men, and women – my own features mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!” - Emily Brontë

7. “There were books about how to be gay; he'd seen them in stores and libraries. Some of them even had diagrams. But there weren't any diagrams about how to fall in love with your best friend and not fuck everything up.” - Poppy Z. Brite

8. “No." Magnus strode toward him. "I didn't call you because I'm tired of you only wanting me around when you need something. I'm tired of watching you be in love with someone else-someone, incidentally, who will never love you back. Not the way I do.” - Cassandra Clare

9. “Stephen had spared no expense in making himself more unhappy, his own position as a rejected lover clearer.” - Patrick O'Brian

10. “There was a time when our desire for each other would have landed us in an asylum or prison, had it not been sanctioned by mutual assent. True or false.” - Lawrence Krauser

11. “Being in love with someone who doesn't even know you exist isn't the worst thing in the world. In fact, it's quite the oppostie. Almost like passing in a term paper that you know sucked, but having that period of time where you haven't gotten your grade back yet -- that kind of exhale where you haven't been rejected, although you pretty much know how it's going to turn out.” - Tonya Hurley

12. “I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was hurricane.” - John Green

13. “Mom put dense cheddar bread into a bag for a man who said this was his wife's favorite - he'd driven all the way from New Jersey to buy it because today was their anniversary. Several women in the store jabbed their husbands on hearing this. I hung my head - Peter Terris wouldn't cross the street to buy me a Twinkie.” - Joan Bauer

14. “It was February sixth: eight days until Valentine's Day. I was dateless, as usual, deep in the vice grip of unrequited love. It was bad enough not having a boyfriend for New Year's Eve. Now I had to cope with Valentine datelessness, feeling consummate social pressure from every retailer in America who stuck hearts and cupids in their windows by January second to rub it in.” - Joan Bauer

15. “If I said I was madly in love with you you'd know I was lying.” - Margaret Mitchell

16. “Unrequited love is so boring. Weeping under a blue-black sky is for suckers or maniacs.” - Alice Hoffman

17. “A mighty pain to love it is,And 't is a pain that pain to miss;But of all pains, the greatest painIt is to love, but love in vain.” - Abraham Cowley

18. “I wouldn't change it," Simon said. "I wouldn't give up loving you. Not for anything. You know what Raphael told me? That I didn't know how to be a good vampire, that vampires accept that they're dead. But as long as I remember what it was like to love you, I'll always feel like I'm alive.” - Cassandra Clare

19. “Why then, O brawling love! O loving hate!O any thing, of nothing first create!O heavy lightness, serious vanity,Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms,Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health,Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!This love feel I, that feel no love in this.” - William Shakespeare

20. “If you don't receive love from the ones who are meant to love you, you will never stop looking for it.” - Robert Goolrick

21. “She hated that she was still so desperate for a glimpse of him, but it had been this way for years.” - Julia Quinn

22. “...unrequited love does not die; it's only beaten down to a secret place where it hides, curled and wounded. For some unfortunates, it turns bitter and mean, and those who come after pay the price for the hurt done by the one who came before.” - Elle Newmark

23. “I thought of all the others who had tried to tie her to the ground and failed. So I resisted showing her the songs and poems I had written, knowing that too much truth can ruin a thing. And if that meant she wasn't entirely mine, what of it? I would be the one she could always return to without fear of recrimination or question. So I did not try to win her and contented myself with playing a beautiful game. But there was always a part of me that hoped for more, and so there was a part of me that was always a fool.” - Patrick Rothfuss

24. “I wanted to see the place where Margaret grew to what she is, even at the worst time of all, when I had no hope of ever calling her mine.” - Elizabeth Gaskell

25. “He shrank from hearing Margaret's very name mentioned; he, while he blamed her – while he was jealous of her – while he renounced her – he loved her sorely, in spite of himself.” - Elizabeth Gaskell

26. “Its been six weeks," he murmured. "Six weeks I've wanted you. I know how you move, and how the sunlight makes a shadow on the curve of your cheek, and the shape of your ear." He chucked harshly then turned his head on the pillow to look at her. "I'm dying," he said. He dropped his fist against his chest. "Right here, you're killing me.” - Laura Kinsale

27. “I had discovered that there was something more painful than falling in love with someone who hasn't fallen for you; hurting that person-hurting him and not being able to do anything about it.” - Elizabeth Chandler

28. “Vanity was stronger than love at sixteen and there was no room in her hot heart now for anything but hate.” - Margaret Mitchell

29. “I had to get over [him]. For months now, a stone had been sitting on my heart. I'd shed a lot of tears over [him], lost a lot of sleep, eaten a lot of cake batter. Somehow, I had to move on. [Life] would be hell if I didn't shake loose from the grip he had on my heart. I most definitely didn't want to keep feeling this way, alone in a love affair meant for two. Even if he'd felt like The One. Even if I'd always thought we'd end up together. Even if he still had a choke chain on my heart.” - Kristan Higgins

30. “Rats! There goes the bell... oh, how I hate lunch hours! I always have to eat alone because nobody likes me... Peanut butter again... I wish that little red haired girl would come over, and sit with me. Wouldn’t it be great if she’d walk over here, and say, “May I eat lunch with you, Charlie Brown?” I’d give anything to talk with her... she’d never like me, though... I’m so blah and so stupid... she’d never like me... I wonder what would happen if I went over and tried to talk to her! Everyone would probably laugh... she’d probably be insulted someone as blah as I am tried to talk to her. I hate lunch hour... all it does is make me lonely... during class it doesn’t matter... I can’t even eat... Nothing tastes good... Rats! Nobody is ever going to like me... Lunch hour is the loneliest hour of the day!” - Charles M. Schulz

31. “When I talk about unrequited love, most of you probably think about romantic love, but there are many other kinds of love that are not adequately returned, if they are returned at all. An angry adolescent may not love her mother back as her mother loves her; an abusive father doesn't return the innocent open love of his young child. But grief is the ultimate unrequieted love. However hard and however long we love someone who has died, they can never love us back. At least that is how it feels...” - Rosamund Lupton

32. “And so she shuddered away from the threat of his enduring love. What did he mean? Had she not the power to daunt him? She would see. It was more daring than became a man to threaten her.” - Elizabeth Gaskell

33. “He could remember all about it now; the pitiful figure he must have cut; the absurd way in which he had gone and done the very thing he had so often agreed with himself in thinking would be the most foolish thing in the world; and had met with exactly the consequences which, in these wise moods, he had always foretold were certain to follow, if he ever did make such a fool of himself.” - Elizabeth Gaskell

34. “I realised that one might love him secretly with no hope of encouragement, which can be very enjoyable for the young or inexperienced.” - Barbara Pym

35. “I shall never love any as I love thee, Moonbrow!” she cried.He nuzzled her, very gently. “Nor I you, Ryhenna,” he said. “Tek is my mate. I love her. You are my shoulder-friend, and I love you. I love you both, but differently. And when in a year or two years’ time, you dance court within this glade, it will be with one whom you love in a way entirely other than the way that you love me. I am your companion, your friend, Ryhenna, just as you are always and ever mine. Stand fast with me,” he said, “and no foe shall ever part us.” - Meredith Ann Pierce

36. “I was trying to make you jealous!" Simon screamed, right back. His hands were fisted at his sides. "You're so stupid, Clary. You're so stupid, can't you see anything?"She stared at him in bewilderment. What on earth did he mean? "Trying to make me jealous? Why would you try to do that?"She saw immediately that this was the worst thing she could have asked him."Because," he said, so bitterly that it shocked her, "I've been in love with you for ten years, so I thought it seemed like the time to find out whether you felt the same about me. Which, I guess you don't.” - Cassandra Clare

37. “Granted, I'd waited a long time to hear those words. Would've sold a kidney-maybe two-to have heard them at one point. Now, though...they didn't have the same impact. They were, in fact, an overcooked noodle in the pasta salad of love.” - Kristan Higgins

38. “sometimes no matter how many eyelashes or dandelion seeds you blow, no matter how much of your heart you tear out and slap on your sleeve, it just ain't gonna happen.” - Melissa Jensen

39. “But that afternoon he asked himself, with his infinite capacity for illusion, if such pitiless indifference might not be a subterfuge for hiding the torments of love.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

40. “Why should you think that I should woo in scorn?Scorn and derision never come in tears:Look, when I vow, I weep; and vows so born, In their nativity all truth appears.How can these things in me seem scorn to you,Bearing the badge of faith, to prove them true?” - William Shakespeare

41. “...Usually i’d sit back and just enjoy the view for what it was because it’s not often you come across something so ridiculously out of place, a girl like you, on the subway, it’s like spotting a unicorn at the zoo.I reasoned how to pull this off, to get you, to say hi, to ask your name, what your voice sounded like, if you had a cute smile because i like cute smiles. In ten minutes I had a thousand thoughts of you and you had no clue...” - Stephan K. Garcia

42. “To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.” - Federico García-Lorca

43. “I imagine there must be only a very, very few men in the world, that I should like to marry; and of those few, it is ten to one I may never be acquainted with one; or if I should, it is twenty to one he may not happen to be single, or to take a fancy to me.” - Anne Brontë

44. “Love is as simple as the absence of self given to another. God, when invited, fills the void of any unrequited love; hence loving is how one is drawn closer to God no matter its most horrific repercussions.” - Criss Jami

45. “He was a gentle and sensitive soul, and therefore had a short temper, which is why he went straight after everything with an ax...” - Bohumil Hrabal

46. “She hardly ever thought of him. He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer.” - T.H. White

47. “Unrequited love is the infinite curse of a lonely heart.” - Christina Westover

48. “I think if you like somebody you have to tell them. It might be embarrassing to say it, but you will never regret stepping up. I know from personal experience, however, that you should not keep telling a girl that you like her after she tells you she isn't into it. You should not keep riding your bike by her house either.” - Donald Miller

49. “Because, if you could love someone, and keep loving them, without being loved back . . . then that love had to be real. It hurt too much to be anything else.” - Sarah Cross

50. “Unrequited love is a ridiculous state, and it makes those in it behave ridiculously.” - Cassandra Clare

51. “A person doesn't know true hurt and suffering until they've felt the pain of falling in love with someone whose affections lie elsewhere.” - Rose Gordon

52. “When unrequited love is the most expensive thing on the menu, sometimes you settle for the daily special.” - Miranda Kenneally

53. “It's delicious to have people adore you, but it's exhausting, too. Particularly when your own feelings don't match theirs.” - Tasha Alexander

54. “Fiction has been maligned for centuries as being "false," "untrue," yet good fiction provides more truth about the world, about life, and even about the reader, than can be found in non-fiction.” - Clark Zlotchew

55. “You loved me-then what right had you to leave me? What right-answer me-for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart- you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine."~Heathcliff” - Emily Brontë

56. “He's charmed by her as if she were some fairy!" continued Arabella. "See how he looks round at her, and lets his eyes rest on her. I am inclined to think that she don't care for him quite so much as he does for her. She's not a particular warm-hearted creature to my thinking, though she cares for him pretty middling much-- as much as she's able to; and he could make her heart ache a bit if he liked to try--which he's too simple to do.” - Thomas Hardy

57. “You have never loved me as I love you--never--never! Yours is not a passionate heart--your heart does not burn in a flame! You are, upon the whole, a sort of fay, or sprite-- not a woman!” - Thomas Hardy

58. “The priest's lesson: beware the Nightlord, for his pleasure is a mortal's doom. My grandmother's lesson: beware love, especially with the wrong man.” - N.K. Jemisin

59. “I want him to see the flowers in my eyes and hear the songs in my hands.” - Francesca Lia Block

60. “Oh why rebuke you him that loves you so? / Lay breath so bitter on your bitter foe.” - William Shakespeare

61. “You know, unrequited love is very difficut? It's not just having this one-sided love of someone who's far away. Being close, talking daily, liking a guy who's constantly near me is harder than it would be under different circumstances.” - Park So Hee

62. “But his face had that hollow look, as if there was something gone... you know that look. The inward focus. Distantly attentive to the home you're missing, or the someone you're missing. That look that a bird has when it turns it dry reptilian eye on you. That look that doesn't see you because the mind is filled up with someone it would rather see.” - Gregory Maguire

63. “Though you are three times more beautiful than angels,Though you are the sister of the river willows,I will kill you with my singing,Without spilling your blood on the ground.Not touching you with my hand,Not giving you one glance, I will stop loving you,But with your unimaginable groansI will finally slake my thirst.From her, who wandered the earth before me,Crueler than ice, more fiery than flame,From her, who still exists in the ether—From her you will set me free.” - Anna Akhmatova

64. “Out of her favour, where I am in love.” - William Shakespeare

65. “I have to admit, an unrequited love is so much better than a real one. I mean, it's perfect... As long as something is never even started, you never have to worry about it ending. It has endless potential.” - Sarah Dessen

66. “What made you feel that stomach-churning agony for one person and not another? If Bridget were God, she would have made it against the law for you to feel that way about someone without them having to feel it for you right back.” - Ann Brashares

67. “YOU YOU YOUyour eyes, thick as a high school scrapbook crackling and yellow, curling at the edgesa book of myths in which i do not appear.” - Clint Catalyst

68. “We're cool," I say calmly, although I feel something else. I feel... sad. Like I've lost something I never quite had.” - Christine Seifert

69. “He doesn't even like me.I let the thought roll around in my head. Anything I feel during that time gets shoved into the vault with the ten-foot-think door slamming as soon as it goes in, just in case something in there has any intention of crawling out.” - Susan Ee

70. “It was like this sometimes, and I felt I should look away, but I couldn't. I wanted to be there, having my face touched, defeating a heart like Peter's, but the next best thing was seeing it for Tiger Lily.” - Jodi Lynn Anderson

71. “As so many commitments demand your timeOr your shut-eye important be,Your attraction to me must in some way lack,Such a pity to spend time on thee.” - Charlotte M. Liebel

72. “Maybe I was destined to forever fall in love with people I couldn’t have. Maybe there’s a whole assortment of impossible people waiting for me to find them. Waiting to make me feel the same impossibility over and over again.” - Carol Rifka Brunt

73. “Nothing had changed. I was the stupid one again. I was the girl who never understood who she was to people.” - Carol Rifka Brunt

74. “I’d always secretly believed that a love as fierce and true as mine would be rewarded in the end, and now I was being forced to accept the bitter truth.” - Alma Katsu

75. “Which is when I decided I would never love anyone again because you just felt like an idiot when you put love out there and it didn't come back your way.” - Karen Tayleur

76. “Besides, unrequited love is one of those things that all teen-agers have to go through, right?” - Wendy Higgins

77. “The night before, I'd gone overboard with my Lila poems, and maybe it's true that I was hoping that in them he'd see the genius of me, the beauty of my words in his hands.” - Beth Kephart

78. “Soul connections are not often found and are worth every bit of fight left in you to keep.” - Shannon Alder

79. “Love?' he asked himself, giving no sense of recognition for that word in the dictionary of his mind. It was the only battle he had lost in life, the only thing that had been snatched away from him, before he could even claim it.” - Faraaz Kazi

80. “The pain would not leave him. It came to him like the tide that hits the sea.” - Faraaz Kazi

81. “You talked over the tour guide who pointed to houses and windows. Showing us where people had lived and died and other people now stayed in their place. Just like a broken heart." - Adieu” - Kate Chisman

82. “You wanted a wife but I wasstill a girl.” - Kate Chisman

83. “In the morning, that moment, when I knew it was you. When I could feel you breathing and we opened our eyes at the exact same time.” - Kate Chisman

84. “Girls spilled drinks down their dresses and flicked their hair. Wishing anyone, maybe even you, would notice them... You were someone to me.” - Kate Chisman

85. “I watched you try on suits in Hugo Boss.‘For the big job,’ you said. And I laughed, because I knew I would never see it. I’d never get up and watch you put it on and walk out of the door. I would never be the one that you came home to.” - Kate Chisman

86. “And my desire,' he said, 'is a desire that is as long as a year; but it is love given to an echo, the spending of grief on a wave, a lonely fight with a shadow, that is what my love and my desire have been to me.” - Augusta Gregory

87. “I’ve always loved you,” he said, his eyes a blue that was almost violet. “You know this.” She swallowed a lump in her throat. “I only wonder whether I deserve such devotion.”“Sometimes people fall in love with those who do not return the same strength of feelings. It is as it is,” he said with a quiet intensity. “What I give, I give freely. You owe me nothing, not love, not friendship, not even obligation.” - Sherry Thomas

88. “There is nothing so mortifying as to fall in love with someone who does not share one's sentiments.” - Georgette Heyer

89. “All these years I've had a story in my mind, the story about us that never really existed. And because of that story, I've kept you framed up on the wall in a little box of nostalgic moonlight.” - Cathleen Schine

90. “I've pushed your love away and I've run from you, sometimes I've checked out, but this is the reason. I just couldn't understand what we have. I mean we have never met in real life, yet we've loved each other for over 3 years.” - Chimnese Davids

91. “For the first time she had dimly realized that only the hopeless are starkly sincere and that only the unhappy can either give or take sympathy--even some of the bitter and dangerous voluptuousness of misery.” - Jean Rhys

92. “Shut up…let me tell you, LET ME. Every time I look at your face or even remember it, it wrecks me. And the way you are with me and you’re just fun and you shit all over me and you make fun of me and you’re real. I don’t have enough time in any day to think about you enough...I don’t even think about women anymore. I think about you.” - Louis C.K.

93. “With every step I took away from her, the movement at my heart and between my legs grew more defined: I felt like a ventriloquist, locking his protesting dolls in to a trunk.” - Sarah Waters

94. “I came hoping to see those eyes, but instead I return with my heart, leaving behind only flowers.” - Kim Dong Hwa

95. “I get what it's like to want something, but to try and force yourself to really believe that you don't.” - Cora Carmack

96. “Let’s always love each other, and never be in love with each other.” - David Levithan

97. “Everyone goes through a period of Traviamento - when we take, say, a different turn in life, the other via. Dante himself did. Some recover, some pretend to recover, some never come back, some chicken out before even starting, and some, for fear of taking any turns, find themselves leading the wrong life all life long.” - Andre Aciman

98. “What I wanted to preserve was the turbulent gasp in his voice which lingered with me for days afterward and told me that, if I could have him like this in my dreams every night of my life, I'd stake my entire life on dreams and be done with the rest. (p. 109)” - Andre Aciman

99. “If there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don't snuff it out, don't be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we'd want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste! (p. 225)” - Andre Aciman

100. “Most of us can't help but live as though we've got two lives to live, one is the mockup, the other the finished version, and then there are all those versions in between. But there's only one, and before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now there's sorrow. I don't envy the pain. But I envy you the pain. (p. 225)” - Andre Aciman

101. “And on that evening when we grow older still we'll speak about these two young men as though they were two strangers we met on the train and whom we admire and want to help along. And we'll want to call it envy, because to call it regret would break our hearts.” - Andre Aciman

102. “...and her dreams that didn't happen, that couldn't have happened because she'd pinned them on somebody too broken and unattainable to love her back.” - Janette Rallison

103. “Certainly no one has ever died of an unrequited passion—it's usually the ones that are requited that get people in trouble.” - Mercedes Lackey

104. “One sided-love always goes with the urge of possessing.” - Yu-Rang Han

105. “Winter is much like unrequited love; cold and merciless.” - Kellie Elmore

106. “Cruelty is a language that the blind can see, the deaf can hear, and the heart feels forever.” - Shannon L. Alder

107. “We've done so much together, wherever I go and whatever I see, I think of you. Newborn babies; the pattern on the plate that you can see under a paper-thin slice of sashimi; fireworks in August. The moon hidden behind the clouds over the ocean at night. When I'm sitting down someplace, inadvertently stepping on someone's toes, and have to apologize. And when someone picks up something I've dropped, and I thank him. When I see an elderly man tottering along,and wonder how much longer he has to live. Dogs and cats peeking out from alleyways. A beautiful view from a tall building. The warm blast of air you feel when you go down into a subway station. The phone ringing in the middle of the night. Even when I have crushes on other men, I always see you in the curve of their eyebrows.""Yet I must remain calm, detached. It's a little like trying to ignore a plate of delicious food when you're really hungry. When it beckons you, there's no problem with enjoying the aroma and appreciating it with your eyes, but at some point you have to separate yourself and realize, like a professional waiter does, that it's not your own. It's my job to ignore those plates heaped with delicious morsels and just carry them where they need to go.” - Banana Yoshimoto

108. “Eternity has a way of letting us all grow up.” - Shannon L. Alder

109. “Inadequate love is love. Unrequited love is love.” - Lan Samantha Chang

110. “...I'm the last person to ask about unrequited love - I've run away to the Moon and fled to its valleys...” - John Geddes

111. “...what is the meaning of La Belle Dame Sans Merci? - have you never been enthralled? enchantment that is unrequited desolates the soul...” - John Geddes

112. “For so long, it was just my secret. It burned inside me, and I felt like I was carrying something important, something that made me who I was and made me different from everybody else. I took it with me everywhere, and there was never a moment when I wasn't aware of it. It was like I was totally awake, like I could feel every nerve ending in my body. Sometimes my skin would almost hurt from the force of it, that's how strong it was. Like my whole body was buzzing or something. I felt almost, I don't know, noble, like a medieval knight or something, carrying this secret love around with me.” - Carolyn Parkhurst

113. “It was September, and there was a crackly feeling to the air. I was saying something that was making her laugh, and I couldn't stop looking at her. It was a little bit chilly, and her cheeks were pink, and her dark hair was flowing around her face. All I wanted for the rest of my life was to keep making her laugh like that. Sometimes our arms brushed against each other as we walked, and it was like I could feel the touch for minutes after it happened.” - Carolyn Parkhurst

114. “Once I saw Graham - wholly unconscious of her proximity - push her with his restless foot. She receded an inch or two. A minute after one little hand stole out from beneath her face, to which it had been pressed, and softly caressed the heedless foot.” - Charlotte Brontë

115. “Your dress is thin, you have been dancing, you are heated." "Always preaching," retorted she; "always coddling and admonishing." The answer Dr. John would have given did not come; that his heart was hurt became evident in his eye; darkened, and saddened, and pained, he turned a little aside, but was patient.” - Charlotte Brontë

116. “I don’t believe in ghosts and neither should you, Kingsley.””Why not? I’ve been in love with a ghost for thirty years.” Kingsley strolled over to the armchair and sat on the ottoman between the other man’s knees. Soren narrowed his eyes at him. “The body’s not even cold yet. Eleanor’s been gone one day and you’re already trying to get me into bed again?” ”Again?” Kingsley laughed and rolled his eyes. “Always. Are you surprised?” Soren shrugged. “Not really.” - Tiffany Reisz

117. “My heart is sair-I dare na tell,My heart is sair for Somebody.” - Robert Burns

118. “I didn't call you because I'm tired of you only wanting me around when you need something. I'm tired of watching you be in love with someone else - someone, incidentally, who will never love you back. Not the way I do.” - Cassandra Clare

119. “Perfect behavior is born of complete indifference. Perhaps this is why we always love madly someone who treats us with indifference.” - Cesare Pavese

120. “Sometimes you grow to love the shadow that follows.” - Donna Lynn Hope

121. “NOVIA. ¡Porque yo me fui con el otro, me fui! (Con angustia.) Tú también te hubieras ido. Yo era una mujer quemada, llena de llagas por dentro y por fuera,y tu hijo era un poquito de agua de la que yo esperaba hijos, tierra, salud; pero el otro era un río oscuro, lleno de ramas, que acercaba a mí el rumor de sus juncos y su cantar entre dientes. Y yo corría con tu hijo que era como un niñito de agua, frío, y el otro me mandaba cientos de pájaros que me impedían el andar y que dejaban escarcha sobre mis heridas de pobre mujer marchita, de muchacha acariciada por el fuego. Yo no quería, ¡óyelo bien!, yo no quería. ¡Tu hijo era mi fin y yo no lo he engañado, pero el brazo del otro me arrastró como un golpe de mar, como la cabezada de un mulo, y me hubiera arrastrado siempre, siempre, siempre, aun que hubiera sido vieja y todos los hijos de tu hijo me hubiesen agarrado de los cabellos.” - Federico García-Lorca

122. “The moment he laid eyes on Kuga, I knew. There's a reason I'm doing this to him. I want to see it; how he's fallen in love with a guy, and how he makes him his own. And then what I've done will become a sharp knife, thrown right back at me.That's right. I just wanted to see.And the meaning behind the sharp knife flying towards me: Why not me? Why can't it be me? All this time, I would be lying if I said I've never wished for it, but by being merely an observer, I've somehow managed to distance myself.Kuga is a bright light, like the sun. I, on the other hand... (Yashiro)” - Kou Yoneda

123. “Tell me, if you thought a man had a tendresse for you, but he wasn't doing anything about it. And you wanted to hurry him up a little so you made a move, an unmistakable move; one that nobody could pretend had been a misunderstanding. And he - he ignored it - ignored you. What would you feel?” - Ahdaf Soueif

124. “Hunting hawks did not belong in cages, no matter how much a man coveted their grace, no matter how golden the bars. They were far more beautiful soaring free. Heartbreakingly beautiful.” - Lois McMaster Bujold

125. “I never hated you. My anger was never with you, but with the little hell my heart had put me in. The anger always passed. I never regretted loving you. If I had gone to my grave never kissing you or touching you, I still would not have thought it a wasted love.” - Madeline Hunter

126. “I was even a little glad that if it wasn’t going to be me she wanted, it was going to be someone who really deserved her.” - Cassandra Clare

127. “I caught myself thinking about falling in love with someone who I hoped was out there right now thinking about the possibility of me, but I quickly banished the notion. It was that kind of thinking that landed me in this situation to begin with. Hope can ruin you.” - Perry Moore

128. “The most confused you will ever get is when you try to convince your heart and spirit of something your mind knows is a lie.” - Shannon L. Alder

129. “There comes a time in your life when you have to choose to turn the page, write another book or simply close it.” - Shannon L. Alder