Stephen King on love

Get busy living, or get busy dying.

The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them⁠—words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them that I have the heart of a small boy…and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson1809–1892In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850)In contextOften credited to Augustine of Hippo

If music be the food of love, play on.

William Shakespeare1564–1616Twelfth Night (1601), Act I, scene i.In context

• Music

Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

C. S. Lewis1898–1963The Four Loves (1960), Ch. VI: “Charity”