Belles-Lettres

Love knows no secrets, when it is hidden it will be discovered Love has no choice; when it seizes a man, he will confess everything, everything that was not done. Love has no pity, even an old man may be put to shame, love does not return to a Thing it desires. When it pursues, he turns mad. Love humbles a man his body becomes emaciated; when a friend of ours is humiliated it is not fair to laugh at him. A man does not have the stamina to put love aside. Love never agrees to share (a man's attention) with anything; If you irritate love, you melt away at once. Love is a disease, a malignant incurable disease. -Swahili Love Poetry translated by Ali Ahmed Jahadhmy

Narrator: This is a story of boy meets girl. But you should know up front, this is not a love story. Rachel Hansen: Just because she's likes the same bizzaro crap you do doesn't mean she's your soul mate. Rachel Hansen: Tom, I know you think she was the one, but I don't. Next time you look back, I think you should look again. Summer: You weren't wrong, Tom. You were just wrong about me. Summer: I woke up one morning and I just knew. Tom: Knew what? Summer: What I was never sure of with you. Tom: My name's Tom. Girl at Interview: [shaking hands] Nice to meet you. I'm Autumn. Narrator: Most days of the year are unremarkable. They begin, and they end, with no lasting memories made in between. Most days have no impact on the course of a life. May 23rd was a Wednesday. Paul: Robin is better than the girl of my dreams. She's real. Tom: You don't want to be named as someone's boyfriend, and now your someone's wife? McKenzie: Hey, don't you have ...

Never believe in anything until it has been officially denied. Otto von Bismarck There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them. Niels Bohr The nice thing about egoists is that they don't talk about other people. Lucille S. Harper Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. Robert A. Heinlein I never made a mistake in my life; at least, never one that I couldn't explain away afterwards. Immanuel Kant I became a feminist as an alternative to becoming a masochist. Sally Kempton Some folks are wise and some are otherwise. Tobias George Smolett It is easier to stay out than get out. Mark Twain I think; therefore, I'm single. Lizz Winstead "For there is nothing either good or bad, thinking makes it so." - William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Hamlet, II.ii "It is impossible to defeat an ignorant man in argument." - William Gibbs McAdoo (1863-1941) "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." - Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-182...

No people are uninteresting. Their fate is like the chronicle of planets. Nothing in them is not particular, and planet is dissimilar from planet. And if a man lived in obscurity making his friends in that obscurity obscurity is not uninteresting. To each his world is private, and in the world one excellent minute. And in that world one tragic minute. These are private. In any man who dies there dies with him his first snow and kiss and fight. It goes with him. They are left books and bridges and painted canvas and machinery. Whose fate is to survive. But what has gone is also not nothing: by the rule of the game something has gone. Not people die but worlds die in them. Whom we knew as faulty, the earth's creatures Of whom, essentially, what did we know? Brother of brother? Friend of friends? Lover of lover? We who knew our fathers in everything, in nothing. They perish. They cannot be brought back. The secret worlds are not regenerated. And every time again and again I make my la...

The strongest prisons are built with walls of silence.

Foolish men who accuse women unreasonably, you blame yet never see you cause what you abuse. You crawl before her, sad begging for a quick cure; why ask her to be pure when you have made her bad? In one heroic breath your reason fails, like a wild bogeyman made up by a child who then is scared to death. With idiotic pride you hope to find her prize: a regal whore like Thais and Lucretia for a bride. Has anyone ever seen a stranger moral fervor: you who dirty the mirror regret it is not clean? You treat favor and disdain with the same shallow mock- ing voice: love you and you squawk, demur and you complain. No answer at her door will be a proper par: say no--she has no heart, say yes--and she's a whore. Two levels to your game in which you are the fool: one you blame as cruel, one who yields, you shame. How can one not be bad the way your love pretends to be? Say no and she offends. Consent and you are mad. With all the fury and pain your whims cause her, it's good for her who h...

When your face appeared over my crumpled life at first I understood only the poverty of what I have. Then its particular light on woods, on rivers, on the sea, became my beginning in the coloured world in which I had not yet had my beginning. I am so frightened, I am so frightened, of the unexpected sunrise finishing, of revelations and tears and the excitement finishing, I don't fight it, my love is this fear, I nourish it who can nourish nothing, love's slipshod watchman. Fear hems me in. I am conscious that these minutes are short and that the colours in my eyes will vanish when your face sets.