“Swanee!
How I love you, how I love you,
My dear ol' Swanee!
I'd give the world to be
Among the folks in
D-I-X-I-E”

“Every time you go away, I always say
This time it's goodbye, dear
Loving you the way I do
I take you back, without you I'd die dear
Knowing I love you so.”

Hal David (1921–2012) American lyricist

“Oh, If I had been able to realize you with my hand. If the painted canvas was able to give me your dear image. The labor was you ['The Unknown'] the work of art was me – I have kissed your head, I have looked elsewhere… You are neither good, nor charitable. You do not know how to love. – You are only great and beautiful. I sacrificed to tenderness and still, my self, you do not know how to love.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

“Dear me, how I love a library.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

“You loved me as hard as you knew how. I'd give anything to go back and love you better…”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

“Farewell, my great one, my own, farewell, my pride, farewell, my swift, deep, dear river, how I loved your daylong splashing, how I loved to plunge into your cold waves.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

“My love is my soul's imagination…
how do I love you… imagine.”

Saul Williams (1972) American singer, musician, poet, writer, and actor

“I love you still, that's the torment of it. Lestat I never loved. But you! The measure of my hatred is that love. They are the same! Do you know now how much I hate you!”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

“You are the knife I turn inside myself; that is love. That, my dear, is love.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

“How folks lay claim to a loved one is they give you a name of their own. They figure to label you as their property.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant