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.

Everyone wishes to be loved, but in the event, nearly no one can bear it. Everyone desires love but also finds it impossible to believe that he deserves it.

No one has ever loved anyone the way everyone wants to be loved.

Everyone wants love, but there are so few who can give it. Or else you offer it passionately, selflessly, and it's rejected, your love is not wanted, it's a burden.

"You've obviously never been in love."

"I have actually. And awfully. And — always — without hope — I've never had my love reciprocated ever."

I've never really fallen in love
but whatever this feeling is
i wish everyone could experience it

It is a fact that I don’t get enough love, I never did get enough love,

I doubt he’d ever in his life lain down with anyone for whom he had not felt some kind of fondness. He needed love as a palm tree needs water, all his life long: from armies, from cities, from conquered enemies, nothing was enough. It laid him open to false friends, as anyone will tell you. Well, for all that, no man is made a god when he is dead and can do no harm, without love. He needed love and never forgave its betrayal, which he had no understanding of. For he himself, if it was given him with a whole heart, never misused it, nor despised the giver. He took it gratefully, and felt bound by it.

I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give.

I want to love, to love heedlessly!
To love for the sake of loving: Here...there...
This one, that other and everyone...
To love! To love! And love no one!
[...]
He who loves someone and says that love’s fire
Can last a lifetime is nothing but a liar!

We never love anyone. What we love is the idea we have of someone. It's our own concept – our own selves – that we love.

Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does.

Over the years I have met people who have made a very human claim on me by making known their need to be loved. For a long time my response was instant and reflexive, born of the "oughts" I had absorbed: "Of course you need to be loved. Everyone does. And I love you." It took me a long time to understand that although everyone needs to be loved, I cannot be the source of that gift for everyone who asks me for it. There are some relationships in which I am capable of love and otters in which I am not. To pretend otherwise, to put out promissory notes I am unable to honor, is to damage my own integrity and that of the person in need, all in the name of love.

There is a terrible hunger for love. We all experience that in our lives - the pain, the loneliness. We must have the courage to recognize it. The poor you may have right in your own family. Find them. Love them.