Rick Bragg Quotes

... we chase after ghosts and spirits and are left holding only memories and dreams. It's not that we want what we can't have; it's that we've held all we could want and then had to watch it slip away.

Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Endless torments dwell about thee: Yet who would live, and live without thee!

If you think back to your first love, you always remember them and little things always remind you of them.

When you fall in love, you become weak.

I have a one-track mind. That's all that I'm interested in - love. And the lack of it. When it stops.

When we're falling in love or out of it, that's when we most need a song that says how we feel. Yeah, I write a lot of songs about boys. And I'm very happy to do that.

She must have sensed she never really had him. That was a sadness of hers, he knew.

I would have done the same thing I did. I would have put all my energy into loving someone that wasn't you. I would have tried in vain, every day, to not think about you, and what could have been. What should have been. I would have tried to convince myself that there's no such thing as true love, except for the love you yourself make work, even though I know better....The bottom line is I never had any business marrying anyone who wasn't you.

nothing grieves more deeply or pathetically than one half of a great love that isn’t meant to be.

She heard the trace of fear in his voice. The fear that a small boy must have felt when every woman he loved had disappeared from his life, swept away by a merciless fever. She didn’t know how to reassure him, or how to console his long-ago grief.

It will hurt. Because deep down, I'll know there was someone.. someone I was supposed to have met. Only I'll never meet him. I'll go through my whole life waiting for him to come along, only he never will. What kind of life is that?

Forgotten tones of love recur to us, and kind glances shine out of the past--oh so bright and clear!--oh so longed after!--because they are out of reach; as holiday music from within a prison wall--or sunshine seen through the bars; more prized because unattainable--more bright because of the contrast of present darkness and solitude, whence there is no escape.

It was you I thought of all the time, I gave to them the love you did not need: lavished on them a love that was not theirs.

But oh! as to embrace me she inclin'd, I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.

What did I hope for, what did I expect, what rich future did I foresee, when the phantom of my first love, rising up for an instant, barely called forth one sigh, one mournful sentiment?

I love you. It hurts more than anything ever has, but I do. So don't you dare tell me I don't. Don't you ever say it again!

For love, thou know'st, is full of jealousy

She wasn't mine. She hadn't been mine for a long time. She shouldn't be here and I shouldn't have asked. So instead of reassuring her, I kept leaning agains the tree looking like the devil and hoping she turned and ran. ~ The Vincent Boys

The first boy I fell in love with didn't know I loved him, but he managed to break my heart anyway.

In her heart she longed for this man, dreamed of a life that could never be.

That's what I realized: if I did get her back somehow, she wouldn't fill the hole that losing her created.

Just like that. Gone forever. They will not grow old together. They will never live on a beach by the sea, their hair turned white, dancing in a living room to Billie Holiday or Nat Cole. They will not enter a New York club at midnight and show the poor hip-hop fools how to dance. They will not chuckle together over the endless folly of the world, its vanities and stupid ambitions. They will not hug each other in any chilly New York dawn. Oh, Mary Lou. My baby. My love.

Out on the moors, The lonely moors, I roll around in sheep poo. Heathcliff, it's youuuuu, I hate you, I love you tooooo. Let me in, I'm here, it's meeeee, Catheeeeeeee. Look out of your windooooow.

I'd rather bleed with cuts of love than live without any scars.

This is the swamp as I see it, but what I can’t capture on canvas is you as I see you. No brush or paint will ever show the hero that you are. It will never be able to portray the sound of your voice when you whisper my name. The way my skin tingles when you touch me. The passion of you inside me. I love you, Talon. I know that I can’t keep you. No one can ever tame a wild beast. You have a job to do and so do I. I only hope that when you think of me, it’ll bring a smile to your face. Love always, Sunshine. (Sunshine's note)