Mariyam Sajiyath

Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don't blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being 'in love', which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.

Then I realize what it is. It's him. Something about him makes me feel like I am about to fall. Or turn to liquid. Or burst into flames.

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get—only with what you are expecting to give—which is everything.

I will love you always. When this red hair is white, I will still love you. When the smooth softness of youth is replaced by the delicate softness of age, I will still want to touch your skin. When your face is full of the lines of every smile you have ever smiled, of every surprise I have seen flash through your eyes, when every tear you have ever cried has left its mark upon your face, I will treasure you all the more, because I was there to see it all. I will share your life with you, Meredith, and I will love you until the last breath leaves your body or mine.

No matter what has happened. No matter what you’ve done. No matter what you will do. I will always love you. I swear it.

I wanted to tell you that wherever I am, whatever happens, I’ll always think of you, and the time we spent together, as my happiest time. I’d do it all over again, if I had the choice. No regrets.

And in her smile I see something more beautiful than the stars.

It’s one thing to fall in love. It’s another to feel someone else fall in love with you, and to feel a responsibility toward that love.

I love you the way a drowning man loves air. And it would destroy me to have you just a little.

I’m in love with you, and I’m not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I’m in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we’re all doomed and that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we’ll ever have, and I am in love with you.

I never loved you any more than I do, right this second. And I’ll never love you any less than I do, right this second.

Sometimes I can’t see myself when I’m with you. I can only just see you.

I am catastrophically in love with you. Remember that.

I knew the second I met you that there was something about you I needed. Turns out it wasn’t something about you at all. It was just you.

I want everyone to meet you. You’re my favorite person of all time.

There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.

I don’t care how hard being together is, nothing is worse than being apart.

I want to be the friend you fall hopelessly in love with. The one you take into your arms and into your bed and into the private world you keep trapped in your head. I want to be that kind of friend. The one who will memorize the things you say as well as the shape of your lips when you say them. I want to know every curve, every freckle, every shiver of your body.

I want to know where to touch you, I want to know how to touch you. I want to know convince you to design a smile just for me. Yes, I do want to be your friend. I want to be your best friend in the entire world.

But you’ve slipped under my skin, invaded my blood and seized my heart.

And I’ve realized that the Beatles got it wrong. Love isn’t all we need—love is all there is.

No matter where I went, I always knew my way back to you. You are my compass star.

We've already debated the differences between hot and beautiful, but we never really answered what exactly makes a woman beautiful — what dictates a woman's right to that elusive status, what embodies that strong adjective we hold to such high regard? By now we've learned that looks are in the eyes of the beholder and there is indeed a somewhat mystical quality of the soul that can turn a beautiful face into an ugly one. People who have “beautiful” exteriors can begin to look ugly after you get to know them, while someone with a somewhat “average” face can become the most beautiful person you know, proving that beauty isn't just a façade, but an iridescent quality that is not solely dependent on one's gene pool.