Welcome to the web’s most comprehensive site of quotations by women. 43,939 quotations are searchable by topic, by author's name, or by keyword. Many of them appear in no other collection. And new ones are added continually.
Search by Topic:
Find quotations by TOPIC (coffee, love, dogs)
or search alphabetically below.
Search by Last Name:
Search by Keyword:
Romance
-
“A fellow had to chase you till you caught him. Everyone knew that.”
-
“I love giving flowers. It is so deliciously unlasting and romantic.”
-
“An army of lovers shall not fail.”
-
“... romance is the glamour which turns the dust of every-day life into a golden haze.”
-
“... hope and uncertainty [are] the twin ingredients necessary for romance to thrive. ... Nothing begins with so much excitement and hope, or fails as often, as love.”
-
“Why do so many people listen to love songs? In imaginative envy, we idealize what we don't have. The act of yearning for something transmutes it from base metal into gold. Anyway, putting a lid on sexuality inspires romance, because people are then driven to fantasize about it. Romantic love does occur in tribes where sex is freely available (particularly if one is forced to marry someone they don't prefer), but not as often and not as an institution. Denial, repression, and inhibition all feed romantic love, because people obsess about satisfying their biological drives, yet cannot avoid the confines of morality. In that climate, pop songs stoke the hottest fantasies and keep the idea of romance alive.”
-
“... romantic love is a biological ballet. It is evolution's way of making sure that sexual partners meet and mate, then give their child the care it needs to be healthy and make loving attachments of its own. This isn't a simple or fast process. The human brain is so complex, the mind so ingenious, that biology and experience work hand in hand. People usually undergo a series of crushes, infatuations, and loves between infancy and adulthood. They learn to make magnetic attachments, whose power they feel in their cells, in their bones. Thinking about the loved one steers their every thought, and they would die rather than break the force field of their devotion. It is as if they were two stars, tightly orbiting each other, each feeding on the other's gravity. Because nothing and no one in time or creation seems to matter more, a broken relationship rips the lining from the heart, crushes the rib cage, shatters the lens of hope, and produces a drama both tragic and predictable. Wailing out loud or silently, clawing at the world and at one's self, the abandoned lover mourns.”
-
“No one is more romantic than a cynic. I do think that you don't become cynical or 'unsentimental' unless there's a core of romanticism or sentiment that's had a few chips nicked into it.”
-
“People don't roll around naked in my books. I do allow them to go to bed if they're married, but it's all very wonderful and the moon beams.”
-
“We romantic writers are here to make people feel and not think.”
-
“The dream of romantic love is taken more seriously in North America than it is anywhere else in the world, which is why we believe in fidelity and why we believe in infidelity as well. It is also, of course, what makes our divorce rate as high as it is. Falling in love at first sight and instant gratification are part of the world in which we live, so there are people who believe adamantly in fidelity. They just don't believe in it for long.”
-
“The romantic myth is so strong that it survives the wear and tear of marriage by simply detaching from it and floating up on ahead, and women who are rather fond of the men they married, as well as ones who are not, go through life with a bag packed for the day when the shining knight on a white charger arrives, just in case he does.”
-
“... never was there a thoroughly noble nature without some romance in it.”
-
“The hero of romance knows how to treat women. Flowers, little gifts, love letters, maybe poems to her eyes and hair, candlelit meals on moonlit terraces and muted strings. Nothing hasty, physical. Some heavy breathing. Searing lips pressed against the thin stuff of her bodice. Endearments muttered into her luxuriant hair. 'Little things mean a lot.' Her favorite chocolates, his pet names for her, remembering her birthday, anniversaries, silly games. And then the foolish things that remind him of her, her perfume, her scarf, her frilly underthings and absurd lace hankies, kittens in her lap. Mystery, magic, champagne, ceremony, tenderness, excitement, adoration, reverence — women never have enough of it. Most men know nothing about this female fantasy world because they are not exposed to this kind of literature and the commerce of romanticism.”
-
“... excessively analyzing romantic relationships is like wearing a crop top. At some point, you realize you don't have the stomach for it anymore.”
-
“A fine romance! with no kisses! / A fine romance, my friend, this is!”
-
“Delusion detests focus and romance provides the veil.”
-
“I've made a career out of serious lapses in judgment, especially when it comes to romance.”
-
“At some point during almost every romantic comedy, the female lead suddenly trips and falls, stumbling helplessly over something ridiculous like a leaf, and then some Matthew McConaughey type either whips around the corner just in the nick of time to save her or is clumsily pulled down along with her. ... Please. I fall all the time. You know who comes and gets me? The bouncer.”
-
“Romance, like the rabbit at the dog track, is the elusive, fake, and never attained reward which, for the benefit and amusement of our masters, keeps us running and thinking in safe circles.”
-
“There might be a few things in a woman's life that a romantic interlude won't cure, but I don't know any of them.”
-
“You are my country, Desdemona. ... My Egypt. My hot, harrowing desert and my cool, verdant Nile, infinitely lovely and unfathomable and sustaining.”
-
“When Fernando [Lamas] proposed to me, he said, 'Let me take you away from all this.' And I said, 'Away from all what? I'm a movie star!'”
-
“A long-term romance is like a rose bush. In any given season, a blossom might fall off. But if the plant is well nourished, then the season will come around again, and new blossoms appear.”
-
“Romantic love has always seemed to me unaccountable, unassailable, unforgettable, and nearly always unattainable. ... I have found it only twice, in all its perfection, yet I feel that I have always been engaged in it — as if it were something that must always reappear, like leaves on trees. I suppose I am among those people who have always been, and rarely are, in love.”
-
“The human race is all the same when it comes to romantic relations ... A startling absence of impulse control combined with complete myopia.”
-
“I believe no woman ever falls passionately in love with a man unless he has just the least touch of the bounder somewhere in his composition.”