In daydreams, we can maneuver with _______, foiling an opponent, scoring high on fields of glory while crowds cheer, cutting fast to the heart of an adventure.

Hoping for victory, limping from the latest skirmish, lovers enter the arena once again. Sitting still, we are as daring as ________.

Love is the white light of emotion. It includes many feelings which, out of laziness and confusion, we crowd into one simple word. Art is the prism that sets them free, then follows the ________ of one or a few.

If we search for the source of the word, we find a history vague and confusing, stretching back to the Sanskrit lubhyati (“he desires”). I’m sure the ________ rambles back much farther than that, to a one-syllable word heavy as a heartbeat.

Love is an ancient delirium, a desire older than civilization, with _________ stretching deep into dark and mysterious days.

We use the word love in such a sloppy way that it can mean almost nothing or absolutely everything. It is the first _________ students of Latin learn.

In folk stories, unsuspecting lads and lasses ingest a love potion and quickly lose their hearts. As with all intoxicants, love comes in many ________ and strengths.

As with all intoxicants, love comes in many guises and strengths. It has a mixed bouquet, and may include some piquant ________.

Like a ________ created from many emotional colors, it is a fabric whose pattern and brightness may vary.

What is my goddaughter to think when she hears her mother say: “I love Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream”; “I really loved my high school boyfriend”; “Don’t you just love this sweater?” “I’d love to go to the lake for a week this summer”; “Mommy loves you.” Since all we have is one word, we talk about love in ________ or unwieldy ratios.

Love is the most important thing in our lives, a passion for which we would fight or die, and yet we’re reluctant to linger over its name. Without a ________ vocabulary, we can’t even talk or think about it directly.

On the other hand, we have many sharp verbs for the ways in which human beings can hurt one another, dozens of verbs for the subtle ________ of hate.

Fortunately, this has led to some richly imagined works of art. It has inspired poets to create their own private vocabularies. Mrs. Browning sent her husband a poetic ________ of love, which in a roundabout way expressed the sum of her feelings.

Our Egyptian woman, who prefers the birdlike twittering of a ________, and a twentieth-century man, who prefers the clashing jaws of heavy metal, share a passion for music that both would understand.

. People are unique in the way they walk, dress, and gesture, yet we’re able to look at two people—one wearing a business suit, the other a ________—and recognize that both of them are clothed.

Love also has many fashions, some bizarre and (to our taste) shocking, others more familiar, but all are part of a ________ we know.

In the ________ of the heart, time and nation are irrelevant. On that plain, all fires are the same fire.

People search for love as if it were a city lost beneath the desert dunes, where pleasure is the law, the streets are lined with ________ cushions, and the sun never sets.

Why do the same images come to mind when people describe their romantic feelings? ________, culture, and tastes vary, but not love itself, not the essence of the emotion.