Memorable love lines
Coming out with a column so near Valentine's Day is enough reason for me to write about love lines or dialogues I will always remember that women, including my wife, like. I am not a hopeless romantic but I believe men should be romantic enough to woo the love of their life and stay in love with them. Most of these lines I've read from books or seen/heard in the movies. I must have read hundreds of books and seen thousands of movies, as there was a five-year stretch when I watched five movies a week since I was allowed to watch it for free by the theater owner, and I was averaging one book a week in my college days. I still watch two movies a week now and read a book a month. My philosophy in life is heavily influenced by the books I've read and the movies I've seen.
Love lines are meaningful if we know the context why and when they were said, so we will describe the scene where it was said. The line said to Ingrid Bergman "We will always have Paris," by Humphrey Bogart in "Casablanca" makes sense only because she had to leave him for her husband whom she thought had died. In the movie "Havana" Robert Redford waited for Lina Olin in the café so he can give her the exit permit and plane ticket to get out of Cuba just before the revolution reaches the city. When she arrives she asks Redford: "Have you been waiting long?" and Redford replies: "All my life." Or when this guy who is so smitten by his beautiful neighbor finally had the courage to invite her for dinner asks the girl: "Can I invite you over to my apartment for coffee, dinner maybe, or the rest of your life?"
Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan have been a romantic pair in many movies. In the movie "You've Got Mail" where she suspects that Tom Hanks could be her email/online friend, the final scene happens when it was Hanks who showed up, she says: "I wanted so much it would be you." Then there are two Ashton Kutscher movies whose titles I could no longer remember, or what line came from which movie where he had to leave his ladylove, and in the other one when he met his old flame after many years. In one he says: "If I come any closer, I will never let you go." In the second one, where the girl asks him why he never said goodbye, he replied: "If I had said goodbye then, I would never leave."
I've always thought that Jack Nicholson's line: "You make me want to be a better man" while not exactly romantic are words that come from the heart. But a long time ago, maybe 56 years ago, I saw a sign when we used to go bird hunting somewhere between Catmon and Sogod that also expressed deep love, and that sign was "Ang Payag ni Celedonio og Nicolasa Montebon." The sign eventually disappeared but it stayed with me as a sign of the love and pride of Celedonio for his wife and modest possession.
Of a more recent vintage, there is the line in the last scene of the movie "Moses" after he had led the Israelites across the Red Sea and returned to his family. Moses asks his wife: "How do I love you?" and his wife answers: "Always." And when will I leave you? And his wife answers: "Never."
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