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I have not changed; I am still the same girl I was fifty years ago and the same young woman I was in the seventies. I still lust for life, I am still ferociously independent, I still crave justice, and I still fall madly in love easily.
—Isabel Allende, noted Chilean-American “magic realism” author
You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.
—Barbara De Angelis, author and transformational teacher
Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to you. When you dare to reveal yourself fully. When you dare to be vulnerable.
—Dr. Joyce Brothers, psychologist and columnist
Kiss me and you will see how important I am.
—Sylvia Plath, renowned poet and fiction writer
In real love, you want the other person’s good. In romantic love, you want the other person.
—Margaret C. Anderson, literary magazine founder, editor, and publisher
In our minds, love and lust are really separated. It’s hard to find someone that can be kind and you can trust enough to leave your kids with, and isn’t afraid to throw her man up against the wall and lick him from head to toe.
—Tori Amos, radically insightful singer-songwriter
Love at first sight is easy to understand; it’s when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.
—Amy Bloom, writer and psychotherapist
There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.
—Iris Murdoch, Anglo-Irish novelist and philosopher
The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.
—Anais Nin, erotic author extraordinaire
Anyone can be passionate, but it takes real lovers to be silly.
—Rose Franken, playwright and author
I’m not good at being alone. Especially at the end of the day when my finances are a mess, my car is falling apart, [and] I can’t find my shoes. That’s when I need a big strong guy to hold me close, so I can look deep into his eyes and blame him.
—Simone Alexander, funny woman who tells it like it is
Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
—Iris Murdoch, Anglo-Irish novelist and philosopher
I have no patience for women who measure and weigh their love like a country doctor dispensing capsules. If a man is worth loving at all, he is worth loving generously, even recklessly.
—Marie Dressler, stage and screen actress of the silent film and Depression era
You’ll discover that real love is millions of miles past falling in love with anyone or anything. When you make that one effort to feel compassion instead of blame or self-blame, the heart opens again and continues opening.
—Sara Paddison, writer on human potential
…Dreaming that love will save us, solve all our problems, or provide a steady state of bliss or security only keeps us stuck in wishful fantasy, undermining the real power of the love—which is to transform us.
—Bell Hooks, revolutionary author, feminist, and social activist
Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.
—Mary Baker Eddy, founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist
The greatest science in the word, in heaven and earth, is love.
—Mother Teresa, philanthropic missionary nun
Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved.
—Barbara Johnson, feminist literary critic, translator, and scholar
Badass Clare Boothe Luce: Luce Cannon
Clare Boothe Luce, “the woman with the serpent’s tongue,” was the anti-Eleanor Roosevelt, a sort of alternate universe doppelganger who used her razor-sharp wit to oppose while “faintly praising” the First Lady and other unrepentant New Dealers. A virulent Republican and FDR basher, Clare was both a smart and tough cookie, albeit not to everyone’s taste. Clare, however, had a wholly unique way of asserting her woman power. As a young woman, one of her summer jobs during college was dropping feminist tracts out of an airplane for some elderly but unstoppable suffragists. Her next job was writing photo captions for Vogue; there, the renowned beauty quickly ascended to the position of managing editor at Vanity Fair. She was the first woman to hold this post for the glamour glossy and soon proved she could hold her own with the boys, even managing to be welcomed in to their cigarettes and brandy ritual.
Then she met Time and Fortune magnate Henry R. Luce, married, and
