Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes

Love is not all; it is not meat nor drink.

Love is not sufficient. It never has been. Stories that claim otherwise are lies. There's always SOMETHING after happily ever after.

Society is like the air, necessary to breathe but insufficient to live on.

You must remember that a woman, by nature, needs much less to feed upon than a man, a few emotions and she is satisfied.

Fantasy love is much better than reality love.

The seven basic, essential goods and services, Food, Clothing, Shelter, Transportation, Protection, Tools, and (special) Education.

When you're in love, you're asking someone else to fulfill all your unfulfilled needs, to make you whole, and to make you feel good about everything, and no one can do that.

She worked in order to live, and presently fell in love, also in order to live, for the heart, too, has its hunger.

Love is for the soul and sex is for the body. Both cry out for satisfaction

And what's romance? Usually, a nice little tale where you have everything As You Like It, where rain never wets your jacket and gnats never bite your nose and it's always daisy-time.

Eager for bread and love.

The only obsession everyone wants: 'love.' People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open.

Love, desire, ambition, faith - without them, life's so simple, believe me.

It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others.

I see that you believe in love such as the poets and romancers have represented... The poets represent love as the sculptors design beauty, as the musicians create melody; that is to say, endowed with an exquisite nervous organization, they gather up with discerning ardor the purest elements of life, the most beautiful lines of matter, and the most harmonious voices of nature.... To try to find in real life such love as this, eternal and absolute, is the same thing as to seek on the public squares such a woman as Venus or to expect nightingales to sing the symphonies of Beethoven.

Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.

Happiness is not something you acquire; love is not something you produce; love is not something you have; love is something that has you.

I think, she began quietly, I think we want... not just bread for our bellies. We want more than only bread. We want food for our hearts, our souls. We want- how to say it? We want, you know- Puccini music.... we want for our beautiful children some beauty. She leaned over and kissed the curl on her finger. We want roses.

I want love and I won't settle for less

Man wants three things; life, knowledge, and love.

Love is as necessary to human beings as food and shelter; [but] without intelligence, ... love is impotent and freedom unattainable.

That's your problem! You don't want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie.

I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been a victim of my own optimism.

Maybe we didn't have many possessions, but we never went hungry, were cold, or lacked love.

All I ever wanted since I arrived here on earth are the same things I needed as a baby, to go from cold to warm, lonely to held, the vessel to the giver, empty to full.