Love

“Out of my thoughts! You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since – on the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are not more real, or more impossible to displace with your hands, than your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere, and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of the evil. But, in this separation I associate you only with the good, and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you must have done me far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may. O God bless you, God forgive you!”

Better a dinner of herbs than a stalled ox where hate is.

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship.

Before you came,
things were just as they should be:
the sky was simply the limit of what I could see,
the road was just a road, wine was simply wine.

Now everything feels like my heart,
a color somewhere between life and blood:
the gray of your absence, the color of poison, of thorns,
the gold when we meet, a season bursting into flame,
the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of fire,
and the black when you cover the earth
with the ashes of dead fires.

And the sky, the road, the glass of wine?
The sky is a shirt soaked in tears,
the road a vein ready to burst,
and the glass of wine a mirror in which
the sky, the road, the whole world keep changing.

Don't leave now that you're here—
stay, so the world can become itself again:
so the sky can be the sky,
the road a road,
and the glass of wine not a mirror,
but simply a glass of wine.