Love isn’t just romance, flowers and Valentine’s day. Set your heart aflutter with some of the best quotes from the works of local writers.
“When the dream of day and wake
of night and the hours of long trips
become the same, love finds me
a caller waiting for a voice,
a traveller between heartbeats.
In a while, time will forget to exhale.”
– Gwee Li Sui, Busan-Chunchon (One Thousand and One Nights)
“My lips are not cement and they cannot seal these wounds
but I am here, palms held open and I love you.”
-Pooja Nansi, Here is a flower that needs no water (Love Is An Empty Barstool)
“In that moment, she has never loved anyone else. Or maybe it is just muscle memory; after all, the heart is a muscle, too.”
– Stephanie Ye, Seascrapers (Best New Singaporean Short Stories Volume One)
“The deaths – tiny ones, false ones, real ones – we undertake in the name of love art the closest that we ever come to greatness.”
– Amanda Lee Koe, The Ballad of Arlene & Nelly (Ministry of Moral Panic)
“The world owes me something – you are that world.”
– Alfian Sa’at, Request (The Invisible Manuscript)
“Backbone broken, wind-
tossed, love is somewhere
too far off. It doesn’t matter.
What a state. Surely this
is the best kind of lost.”
– Sharlene Teo, Maps (QLRS)
“…even as you break us open like an
unkept promise, I will not watch my life go on without you”
– Tania de Rozario, Without You (Tender Delirium)
“Listen. Listen. My hand swims
into the bay area of your hand.
If we are silent for long enough,
we could start over.”
– Cyril Wong, A Kind of Hush (Unmarked Treasure)
“I miss you
dawn, dream and dusk,
whenever my words run out
and crawl, toothless and silent at last
to the kennel of your heart.”
– Felix Cheong, Missing You (Temptation and Other Poems)
“This is you,
opening your palm to me,
lets run to the edge of the earth,
jump onto the sun as it passes and let it take us up in flames to the sky,
we will be burnt eternal,
I should tell you it’s impossible.”
– Deborah Emmanuel, Too Good For Me
“I do not remember my words now but they
made emptiness easier to capture between
my palms so that I could throw it out when
you finally opened the door for me.”
– Tan Lixin, Loneliness Is A Habit (Before We Are Ghosts)
“The telephone lines have burrowed underground but I still listen for you, on nights where power lines spark in code, afraid to tilt my voice downwards to the dark mouth of the telephone, whisper your name on an empty line.”
– Marc Nair, Power Lines (Ceriph Issue 3)
Share more of your favourite love quotes with us in our comments section or over on our Facebook page!