Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar’s vile tongue be cut out!

Mikhail Bulgakov

“Only when you grow old do you see the rarity of beauty, and what a wonder it really is when flowers bloom between factories and cannons, and poetry still lives between newspapers and stock-market reports.”

–Hermann Hesse

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

W.H. Auden

“My chief occupation, despite appearances, has always been love.” –Albert Camus

“I wish the world were ending tomorrow. Then I could take the next train, arrive at your doorstep…and say: ‘Come with me…we are going to love each other without scruples or fear or restraint. Because the world is ending tomorrow.’ Perhaps we don’t love unreasonably because we think we have time, or have to reckon with time. But what if we don’t have time? Or what if time, as we know it, is irrelevant? Ah, if only the world were ending tomorrow. We could help each other very much.” – Franz Kafka