Literary Love Quotes - Happy Valentines Day!

"Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back." -John Green

Hey there my literary lovers. Sara here brining you a special valentines day post. 

I think it is safe to say over my harrowing 24 years I have had my ups and downs in the real-life relationship run, however one valentine that has always been there for me are my books. They don't ever miss my birthday, get mad when I wake them up at 3.am unable to sleep, and never think that I look fat in these jeans.  Yes I think it is safe to say that the great authors through out time are the only real valentine I could ever hope to have.

To celebrate my long time love, I thought I would share some of the passages through out all of the greatest works that have made my heart swoon over and over again. Some are uplifting, some are heartbreaking, but found in these quotes are just some of the emotions and sentiments I think we all hope to feel at some point or other. I know I do.

Oh god it's wonderful

to get out of bed

and drink too much coffee

and smoke too many cigarettes

and love you so much

-Frank O'hara

"We'd been apart so long--I'd been dead so long," she said in English. "I thought surely you'd built a new life, with no room in it for me. I'd hoped that." 
"My life is nothing but room for you." I said. "It could never be filled by anyone but you."  - Kurt Vonnegut (Mother Night)

So dear I love him that with him all deaths/ I could endure, without him live no life." John Milton, Paradise Lost

"I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, 
in secret, between the shadow and the soul." 
— Pablo Neruda

"It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight." 
— Vladimir Nabokov 

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love." 
— Neil Gaiman 

"If there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft, red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweller's felt so that we should never hear it. Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does." 
— Jonathan Safran Foer 

"Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time." 
— Haruki Murakami

Maybe...you'll fall in love with me all over again."
"Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?"
"Yes. I want to ruin you."
"Good," I said. "That's what I want too." 
— Ernest Hemingway 

Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all those who live without love." 
— J.K. Rowling 

As she stared at the ceiling the first night
her body softly falling back into itself,
she thought of how we dream of journeying
on spaceships to other universes, other worlds,
but really, for the forever,
we’re stuck here on the dirt and
the only time we travel anywhere truly unknowable
is when we slip into the skin of another,
venturing into their mysteries,
always hoping for 
a safe landing. 

-Toby Barlow / Sharp Teeth

So there we are my darlings. Hope you enjoyed some of my favorite passages. Please share some of your own in the comments. 

#keepmoving Calendar of Tales, Tweets, and Gaiman

Calendar Tales: 

An experiment in social media creativity. 

Hey literary lovers. Sara here bringing you a very impromptu post about a fun twitter event I was lucky enough to participate in, and be inspired by yesterday.  Hopefully for the more tech. savvy readers out there, you are already hip to the ways of hastags and tweets, so this will all make sense to you. If not, it's high time you crawl our from under your wifi-free rock and join in the fun!

  Twitter, more than any other social networking site has the potential to connect the greatest number of people in the most basic and primal level possible. This was made clear by the exciting and truely awe inspiring events of the #keepmoving project that was hosted by none other than Neil Gaiman himself on Monday.  For more information about the motivation behind his twitter-spree, please check out Neil's blog where he explains in further detail.  For those who missed out however, all you really need to know is that Mr. Gaiman was asking a series of questions to the twitterverse through out the day, centered around the days of the month.   Some examples include: 

Why is January so dangerous?

Where would you spend a perfect June?

Those of us who participated throughout the day responded with our most clever or heartfelt answers, just happy enough to have found a way to pass a slow winter monday.  What I think myself, as well as others did not expect was the truly heartwarming, earth shattering, and soul exposing connection that was made by such a small symbol: #.   

As the answers flooded in, strangers from around the world were able to lay down their burdens, pick up the loads of others, and find inspiration in the most unlikely of places, culminating in an event that I can only hope is a sign of things to come.  

Here are just a few of the highlights:

#Maytale: What is the weirdest gift you've ever been given in May?

@wawoodworth The gift of life. It came w/ no instruction manual. I just rely on people who have played the game longer.

‏@scalzi A human kidney. At lunchtime. Not FOR lunch, to be clear. 

@katsaysbarkA birthday card from my father, who was in prison at the time. My birthday is in October

#Dectale: Who would you like to see again in December?

@Steve_Walls #dectale quite possibly the most beautiful thing to happen on Twitter

@Stephen_GM My father, to have the conversation that I couldn't bear to have with him before he died

@ashleyzeldaa I'd like to see myself again. By the end of the year, I've usually lost who I was somewhere along the way.@dch__ Just take a few minutes and read #dectale hashtag. This is what's important in life. Do it now.

#Augtale: If August could speak, what would she say?

@amarthis August would choose not to speak. she'd just whisper wordlessly and give you occasional heated glares.

@invisibeth1321 WTF, why is there nothing interesting going on during me? I'm like the ugly step-sister of months.

@aliasNC13 August would speak of Hungry Ghosts, good luck & bad: of people who understand that love continues after we are gone.

Those are just a few of my personal favorites. I'd love to hear some of your own.

If you have the time, I highly suggest you run through the backlogs of the entire #keepmoving project. The genuine emotion that can be felt in so few typed characters is astounding, and will set your creative heart on fire. However, if you are an insomniac like me, be warned: you will not be getting much sleep tonight.

"@batcave82:last night was exciting, for one moment i felt connected with the whole planet. It's a story told from a million mouths."

Chuck P. knows.

I remember the first time I read Fight Club I was blown away by Chuck Palahniuk's quotes about insomnia. All I could think was... wow this guy has been there. Couldn't have summed up the feelings better myself. 

On the plus side when you have been up for 48 hrs straight, it can make reading seem a bit more surreal.....

"For six months I couldn't sleep. With insomnia, nothing's real. Everything is far away. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy."

When you have insomnia, you are never really asleep, and you are never really awke."

Thanks Chuck. Couldn't have said it better myself. On the plus side, maybe one day I will develop a kick ass alter ego, start an exclusive underground girl kick boxing group, flip my car, then blow up what ever institution is financing my student loans.

Or maybe I already am that personality.....

Hi my name is sara....

...and I am an insomniac.

What I look like when it is not 6 a.m

Hey folks my name is Sara (and occasionally Prongs when I was co-running padfootandprongs.com), and I have some serious trouble sleeping. I figured it was high time I combined my love of reading, writing, and lack of sleep into one kick-ass new book review blog. 

Most of the posts I will be doing will be of a video nature, however my hope is for this site to be a various smorgasbord of literary tidbits; including quotes, interviews, giveaways, and of course reviews. I'm a huge fan of all things fiction, non-fiction, graphic novels, manga, shampoo bottles, or really any form of written word, and those are the types of reviews you can expect from me from the future.

Hopefully, it won't be too slow going at first with getting the videos up, but due to my hectic lifestyle of 50 hr work weeks on top of no sleep, I have no real schedule planned. More or less when the ghost of F.Scott Fitzgerald moves me enough to throw things together, I will get some posts up; however I would love to hear requests, comments, concerns, or anything that will help to make this blog one of your most visited sites.

Here is more of my literary ramblings in video form....

Some of the books I mention:

City of Thieves: David Beinhoff
John Dies at the End - David Wong
Tender is the Night - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Sharp Teeth - Toby Barlow
Blankets - Craig Thompson
Death Note (Black Edition) - Ohba
Scott Pilgrim (Box Set) - O'Malley

Thanks so much for checking out my new site. 
Check me out at twitter : @insomniareview
Looking forward to getting as many posts up this week as possible.