Zora Neale Hurston

We discovered this disarmingly simple, yet powerful quotation while reading one of Ms. Hurston’s earlier plays, “De Turkey and De Law.” As a theme, “love” is immeasurably broad, and try as they might, authors will never exhaust its depths.

But this particular line, though not pithy or metaphorical, stuck with us and served as a perfect foil to the lengthier aphorisms of Shakespeare, Fitzgerald, Dickinson et al. Sometimes, love is simple and direct, and its power lies not in its cleverness but in its honesty: Yes I do, darling, I love you. Falling in love is a moment for fireworks, not speeches.

For this illustration, we began with a modest symbol, the ampersand - that simple conjunction that joins two things together. The ampersand curls loop and twist to form a mirror image, knotted together so much that the two become one.

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