"when you find your soul mate, there can be no question, no hesitation, no games. you have been lovers before in many other lives, so you are attuned to each other immediately. why else is there love at first sight? hollywood is often chided for its use of music coming out of nowhere in a big love scene. believe me, there is music then - music from the spheres." - eileen kaufmann, from who won't walk with tigers

"but we're living on love, of course. last night we went to an ionesco play. the bald soprano, and laughed louder than anyone else in the audience. that's another thing i like about us - we make noise. we play. he jumps over fire hydrants and tries to vault parking meters, eek. i whistle in the street, and tell him how my mother used to tell me to stop that. and when i am my usual antic self, the look of pleasure on him is like grace. with no effort, or adjustment, i can't imagine life without him." - hettie jones, from how i became hettie jones

extracts from a different beat: writings by women of the beat generation

companionship is like a refreshment. sometimes the lovelife is an addition, sometimes it is a subtraction. to me it's a necessary equation that makes a whole, a whole. i speak alot about this love because i bask in it and it engulfs me like a quake. physical hunger is always more substantially filled when there's two. eating changes from mere sustenance to an adventure of the palate. what shall we eat when we are hungry on a sunday noon? we walked into the crystal jade cakery and bought such sweet bread and sat by the movie screens outside the theatre enjoying our gastronomical adventure. i saved a piece of crumbly lao po bing. a token of love. tomorrow's breakfast will be an unspoken reminder of the delightful maxims cake shop in melbourne's chinatown last july. when i eat lao po bing, that is what i think about.

it breaks my heart when it breaks your heart when it breaks my heart when it breaks your heart. no more maggi mee!