Donna Lynn Hope

Has it tortured you as much as it's tortured me?" He asked. "Don't call it torture when it's self-inflicted. You always have a choice.

If I blink she'll disappear," he told her. She looked at him and said,"Maybe that is the best thing for you.

What was I to you?" he asked. She didn't answer but turned and walked away. That's when he knew: Nothing or everything.

I'd rather meander through a pit of vipers than love one more person, but since I'm on the subject of snakes, we all know one, or are one.

Oh yes, even I cry. Just not over you. Who is "you?" The one who has to ask or the one who doesn't?

Don't allow someone not worth it to have the power to occupy your thoughts. If they don't find you worth the effort or the time, why should you waste yours?

Lovers are easy to find and easy to forget but finding an authentic connection is exceptional and limited. It rarely happens, which is why there are so many unhappy people out there.

I don't make people comfortable but that's what couches are for.

Reassuring a jealous woman that you don't want her man creates the bigger beast of resentment because that tells her that what she has isn't desirable and to her, where the opinions of others correlates to her self-worth, is unforgivable.

Straightforwardness intimidates people. They prefer the veneer, despite what they claim.

Can I be trusted? Can you? I can be trusted with some things, but not all things, just like you.

Fortuitous, unexpected beauty is the best beauty because it is unique, and what is unique is remembered.

When you stand next to beauty and know you__e not, you either feel inferior or you__e thankful for the ones who saw you and loved you anyway.

I am sick of old ghosts and I just want to feel safe again without the haunts of old vulnerabilities.

In our lives are special moments that live as their own, the rest is movement with the passage of time.

It seems that the people who come into our lives and stay for the briefest amount of time have the greatest impact upon us. Time may change some things, but not all things. Each day brings me closer to him, and the age in which he passed from this world into the next, but I still fight the urge, on rare occasions, to pick up the phone and dial his number, which I still remember. It's decades later, but that last meal we shared, laughing and smiling at each other from across the table, lost in harmony, seems but yesterday. Then there was the last lingering look and the final wave goodbye.

Do you keep silent to keep a friendship or do you try to lend your support unconditionally, even if what they are doing goes against everything you believe in? Will it be principles over friendship, morality over love?

It's not that I am "above" feeling hatred. It's that I make the choice whether to yield to it or not. Hatred keeps a person with you, and the last thing I want with me in my thoughts is someone who doesn't deserve to be there.