Just Say There's Nothing Holding You Back.

Just say "yes".

Twice.

"It just doesn't happen twice."

quoted by Sam from Sleepless in Seattle

It Can Happen Again.

Ama, e sarai amato a tua volta.

Love, and you shall be loved again.

The Density of Love.

Clare, I want to tell you, again, I love you. Our love has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker, the only real thing in this strange life of mine that I could ever trust. Tonight I feel that my love for you has more density in this world than I do, myself: as though it could linger on after me and surround you, keep you, hold you.

There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love. It’s dark now and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing.

- The Time Traveler's Wife, excerpt

The Cupcake.

From 1,001 Things I Want In A Lover:

#536: Someone who will eat the other half of my cupcake., that I never seem to finish.

Dormi Amore.

Full of warm tea and all the little pills and potions with which the Venetian has piled on me, I sleep most of the day and into the night. Once, when I awaken, I find him sitting on the edge of the bed facing me, his eyes pools of sweetness. "The fever has passed, you're lovely and cools now. Dormi, amore mio, dormi. Sleep, my love, sleep." I look at him, at his narrow hunched shoulders, his face still a picture of worry. He gets up to adjust the blanket, and I look at him bending over me in his faded underwear. I think he looks like the skinny man on the beach before he wrote away for his copy of "Muscle Culture."

I think he is the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen.

- "A Thousand Days in Venice" by Marlena de Blasi (page 31)

I Did Not Ask Her To Marry Me.

I DIDN'T ASK HER TO MARRY ME.

I asked her to keep singing that song that gets stuck in my head.
To keep kissing my neck when she walks by.
I didn't ask her to marry me.

I asked her to keep being us.

Found in a Birks ad.

Tu Sei Per Me.

Tu sei per me, l'aria. You are the air for me.

Ci Vediamo, Amore Mio.

You have gone back to Italy today. I miss you like I miss sunshine on rainy days in Paris when I plan a picnic with wine and baguettes, like when it is the last day in a city and I have a stomachache. I will miss you like the ocean would miss the pull of the moon. See you in 27 days.

Love Is...

Love is...


when your dog licks your face, when you come home, even though you've left him alone all day.


1)being morons together
2)the most noble dementia




It's love if she greets you with a wack around the head.

It's love if she gives you her gum when she gets bored chewing it.

Adam and Eve.

"After all these years, I see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her."

-Mark Twain (Adam, Adam's Diary)

The Sweetest Passions.

Literature and butterflies are the two sweetest passions known to man.
Nabokov

Veinte Poemas de Amor/Twenty Love Poems

From the Song of Despair:

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

Pablo Neruda

A Beautiful Day.

Day 1, I stumbled through "Hello" on 5th Avenue.
Day 2, We grabbed a bite to eat and talked all afternoon.
We caught a movie on Day 14,
And Day 67 she said "I love you" to me.

What a beautiful day.
Day 116 I asked her what she was doing for the rest of my life.
Day 189...Oh I almost lost that girl to my foolish pride.
She said "I do" on Day 482.
And gave me a son on Day 761.

Day 18,253,
Well honey that's 50 years,
here's to you and me.

Day 1, I thank God I said "Hello" on 5th Avenue

My Minnetonka Moccasins

I got Minnetonka moccasins for the first time the other day, after many recommendations from friends and this is how I wore them. They are so comfortable but I only wore them for a few days and then there was a snowstorm in my city. Now they will have to wait for spring!

On My Nightstand (per Dicembre)

This is what has been on my nightstand for reading from November until now: the November issue of Conde Nast Traveler with a lovely article about Sicily, Dear John by Nicholas Sparks is a beautiful story but a heartbreaking one, "Hide This Italian Book" is helping me further my attempt to learn Italian by teaching me all the naughty words, and Petite Anglaise is the book that came from the blog by the same name about love found and lost in Paris.

The History of Love.

If at large gatherings or parties, or around people with whom you feel distant, your hands sometimes hang awkwardly at the ends of your arms- if you find yourself at a loss for what to do with them, overcome with sadness that comes when you recognize the foreignness of your own body-it's because your hands remember a time when the division between mind and body, brain and heart, what's inside and what's outside, was so much less. It's not that we've forgotten the language of gestures entirely. The habit of moving our hands while we speak is left over from it. Clapping, pointing, giving the thumbs-up: all artifacts of ancient gestures.

Holding hands, for example, is a way to remember how it feels to say nothing together. And at night, when it's too dark to see, we find it necessary to gesture on each other's bodies to make ourselves understood.

I Will Always Come For You.

Westley: Hear this now: I will always come for you.

Buttercup: But how can you be sure?

Westley: This is true love - you think this happens every day?

Like A Holiday.

Our love is like a holiday.

If There's Any Kind of Magic In This World.

I believe if there's any kind of God it wouldn't be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there's any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it's almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.

-Celine's quote, from the movie Before Sunrise

Little Things.

Little things.

I think it's the same with people.

I see in them little details,

so specific to each other,

that move me, and that I miss, and...



will always miss.




You can never replace anyone,



because everyone is made of such
beautiful specific details.



Like I remember the way...



your beard has a little
bit of red in it.



And how the sun was
making it glow that...



that morning, right before you left.



I remember that, and...



I missed it!

(from Before Sunset)

A True Man.

“A true man does not need to romance a different girl every night, a true man romances the same girl for the rest of her life”

Ana Alas

Romantic Snack #4

I want to marry you.
I want to have kids with you.

I want to build us a house and settle down.

I want to live until I'm 110 in your arms.
I want to grow old with you.

I don't want 48 uninterrupted hours.



I want a lifetime.

(quoted from Grey's Anatomy)

Love According to Harry Potter.

"Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love."

- J.K. Rowling, spoken by the character Albus Dumbledore

To Dream of Fairy Tales.

Once in awhile,

Right in the middle of an ordinary life,

Love gives us a fairy tale.

Until We Get Lost.

I wanna drive. Until we get lost. Lie in a field staring up at the sky while you point out the Southern Cross. Somehow I know, without asking why, that you love me more in a minute than anyone could in a lifetime. Dancing in the parking lot while the band plays inside. Sweep me off my feet. Baby, marry me.

(Marry Me, lyrics)

Gumdrops and Sugar.

Without a little bit of sugar and love, the world would be darkness and chaos.

A Gingerbread Home to Call Our Own.

Last weekend, Massimiliano and I made his first (and my 21st) gingerbread house. We used a simple package to build it, but we personalized it by creating gingerbread versions of ourselves. More yummy photos on the next post.

A Little Crinkle Above Your Nose.

I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely, and it's not because it's New Year's Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. (When Harry Met Sally)

An Incurable Romantic.

I am in incurable romantic

I believe in hope, dreams, and decency.
Tenderness and kindness.

I believe in mankind.

I believe in goodness,
Mercy and charity
I believe in a universal spirit
I believe in casting bread
Upon the waters.

I am awed by the snow capped mountains
By the vastness of the oceans.

I am moved by a couple
Of any age - holding hands
As they walk through city streets.

A living creature in pain
Makes me shudder with sorrow
A seagull's cry fills me
With a sense of mystery.

A river or stream
Can move me to tears
A lake nestling in a valley
Can bring me peace.

Romantic Snack #3

"You have given me a gift such as I never even dreamt of finding in this life."
-Franz Kafka

How Will I Know Her?

from Leonard Nimroy's "You & I"...

How will I know her?

I will know her by
Her being.
By her aura.
Though she be
A glimpse
A flash,
My eye will know.

I will know her.
Even if she comes
In the blackness
Of the darkest night
Her fragrance...
Will sing to me.

Even if her sound
Should be a whisper
My ear will know.

I will know her.
Even if we
But brush past
Each other in the crowd
Her touch will call
To my brain...
She is here!

Romantic Snack #2

Real love stories never have endings.

Richard Bach

The Airport Moment

Airport Moments | March 29th, 2006

I used to dream of having one of those great romantic moments - walking through the arrivals gate and seeing him standing there. There would be slow motion running, he'd pick me up and twirl me around so happy to see me again. In reality my airport moments have always been significantly more tearful than the daydreams…Sobbing so hard after leaving him that even the customs lady looked at my with pity, talking to him on the phone from airport after airport, wishing i was somewhere - anywhere - but in an airport.

That final airport day was never going to be a Hollywood moment, the closest it came was the stickers on my luggage from LAX Airport. I was tired, I was jetlagged, I was ready to be at home. It all seems a bit of a blur to be honest - after my years of waiting for that moment I can't remember who i hugged first, or the expression on his face as I came through the gate. The only thing I remember is the feeling of being back on the ground, and wishing i'd brushed my hair before i got off the plane.

Posted in romance, thoughts from:
http://happilyeverafter.wordpress.com/2006/03/29/airport-moments/

Every place I go, I think of you

Every song I sing, I sing for you

So kiss me and smile for me

Tell me that you'll wait for me

Hold me like you'll never let me go

Now the time has come to leave you

Close your eyes and I'll be on my way...

The Grand Gesture by Disney

It's the moment when the Beast wants to do something nice for Belle, whose greatest passion is books and reading. He blindfolds her, leads her into a room, and when she opens her eyes, he's given her his entire library.

Romantic Snack #1

Any very minuscule quote or little sentences I come across will be posted as a romantic snack, just a wee nibble of something to chew on and add some sweetness to the day...

I would rather have had one breath of her hair, one kiss from her mouth, one touch of her hand, than eternity without it. One. (City of Angels)

So It's Not Gonna Be Easy...

It's gonna be really hard. We're gonna have to work at this every day, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, you and me, every day.

(The Notebook)

Now say you're a bird.

If you're a bird, I'm a bird.

The Animal Cracker Scene

A.J.: You know what I was thinking?
Grace Stamper: What?
A.J.: I really don't think that the animal cracker qualifies as a cracker.
Grace Stamper: Why?
A.J.: Well cause it's sweet, which to me suggests cookie, I mean well putting cheese on something is sort of a defining characteristic of what makes a cracker a cracker. I don't know why I thought of that, I just...
Grace Stamper: Baby, you have such sweet pillow talk.

Grace Stamper: Baby, do you think it's possible that there's someone doing this very same thing at this very same moment?
A.J.: I hope so, otherwise, what the hell are we trying to save?

(Armageddon)

My Collection of Happy Endings

“Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger. The greatest stories are those that resonate our beginnings and intuit our endings, our mysterious origins and our numinous destinies, and dissolve them both into one.”

This is a photograph of my own collection of once upon a times and happy endings, new languages acquired, old ones forgotten, books of distant lands travelled, and the stories that inspire me to search for the kind of love that some say only exists in fiction.

Piccolo Amore: Bows

My little love at the moment is bows. They are the epitome of femininity and somehow always perk up an outfit with just enough girlish flare and innocence. Worn in the right way, it can also convey timeless elegance. Elegance. My favorite word.

The Inconvenient Kind.

Why is it that most people tend to find the person they end up with at the local Starbucks post-doubleshot-grande-caramel macchiato mix-up or while leisurely perusing through the cooking section of a bookstore chain? Having accumulated more than my fair share of air miles, hopping from one continent to the next, I always wonder why there are not more stories of love that spans oceans and time zones. To me, it just seems like the chances of finding “the one” you are meant for within a ten mile radius of where you grew up would be nothing short of obsolete, yet this tends to be the general trend. Perhaps fate favours convenience as I can say first-hand that tending to a love across the lovely pond we call the Atlantic is certainly not for the faint-of-heart, only the brave. Whatever the reason, if fate truly is kind and gives most of us a fellow with the same zip code, I am elated to be the exception to her kindness. I am looking for great love. The kind that people would want to write a book about- a charming prince, an unlikely principessa, exotic locales, and a "dragon" to slay. I dreamed of the inconvenient love and behold, dreams do come true.

If I Were A Boy, In Love With A Girl.

I like to think that if I were ever a boy in love with a girl, I would recite this poem to her. There is nothing comparable to Neruda.

If suddenly you do not exist,
if suddenly you are not living,
I shall go on living.

I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.

I shall go on living.

For where a man has no voice,
there, my voice.

Where blacks are beaten,
I cannot be dead.
When my brothers go to jail
I shall go with them.

When victory,
not my victory,
but the great victory
arrives,
even though I am mute I must speak;
I shall see it come even though I am blind.

No, forgive me.
If you are not living,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you
have died,
all the leaves will fall in my breast,
it will rain upon my soul night and day,
the snow will burn my heart,
I shall walk with cold and fire and death and snow,
my feet will want to walk to where you sleep,
but
I shall go on living,
because you wanted me to be,
above all things,
untamable,
and, my love, because you know that I am not just one man
but all men.

- Pablo Neruda