An elusive concept, a feeling indescribable, a state of ecstasy only felt by a few lucky ones- love.

I enjoy reading stories and poems of love probably because it’s a concept written so vastly about and it leaves everyone with the freedom to make their own interpretation on what love means to them. It’s crazy, how one word holds a multitude of meanings for each and every one of us. I usually make a list of quotes that I find most meaningful and decided to take a look at nine love quotes that struck a chord with me every time I trace my fingers over them.

“Listen to your heart. It knows everything.” -Paulo Coelho 

Trust your gut and your heart for it will never lead you astray. My life unfolds according to the directions communicated by my heart and there has never been a moment of regret ever since.

“Holding Eleanor’s hand was like holding a butterfly. Or a heartbeat. Like holding something complete and completely alive.” – Rainbow Rowell 

When a touch sends currents through your body, when wind feels like leaves tickling the soles of your feet and when holding hands with that special someone makes you feel completely awakened and alive. The two of you  dance to the rhythm of your hearts, hand in hand.

“But falling in love is always-a pretty crazy thing. It might appear out of the blue and just grab you. Who knos-maybe even tomorrow?” –Haruki Murakami

When we love someone but only find ourselves falling into a bottomless black hole, it almost appears as though there is no one else left but us. As if  that special someone has fallen deep into the clutches of the earth, and has gone and perished forever. As painful as it is, you can never tell when the radiance of love will find you and seek your path in an inexplicable way.  

“What we find in a soul mate is not something wild to tame but something wild to run with.” – Robert Brault

It’s about living with the wilderness one leads you to. Their other side, the side they lead you to, that you could call your own.   

“One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.” – Paulo Coelho 

And sometimes there aren’t reasons enough to love someone. Call it instant connection or just two hearts beating as one. It is plausible.

“She asked, ‘you are in love what does love look like’ to which I replied ‘like everything I’ve ever lost come back to me.” – Nayyirah Waheed

My favourite. Sometimes when all you need to feel is… complete.  

“They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.” –F. Scott Fitzgerald 

You love her youthful look, her cascades of hair, the way her lips curl, the way she brightens up your day with her big, bright smile. But what happens when decades of years pass and you are left with bags of sags, traces of hair fallen on the floor of your room, dentures that you find at the sink and wrinkles at the edges of her skin…Is it difficult then, to reach out and hold on to that body and yearn for that intimacy forever?

“There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” –Leonard Cohen

Vulnerability. To fall in love, happens when you open the doors of your heart to embrace the one eagerly awaiting to enter and call it a home of his own. Human beings are imperfect and we struggle with expectations that others set for us that we set for ourselves. But guess what, we need not be perfect in love. We can be ourselves without ever feeling ashamed.  And that beautiful crack that you have, will be accepted, mended and lauded.

“I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it — to be fed so much love I couldn’t take any more. Just once. ” –Haruki Murakami.

Just once, we crave to see the love in movies, come alive our own little world or live the lives of characters in books that turned us into hopeless romantics, fantasising  for a certain  someone who would sweep us off our feet. We yearn to live in a world where everything comes to a standstill except the love of two lovers.  

Words, much like emotions, don’t mean anything until you give a meaning to it. To all readers of TheKopiWrite, here’s wishing you a very happy Valentine’s Day.