Writing the Perfect Kiss

It’s coming… somewhere in the next few chapters. The longed for kiss. I can feel my characters working up to it, and there’s not much I can do to stop them. So in preparation, I’m doing research on how to write the perfect kiss.  The perfect literary kiss is different than an actual kiss because it’s about the idea of a kiss. You know how the idea of something is often better than the real something? In real life noses get in the way, or someone has just eaten onions, has really chapped lips or hiccups right in the middle. But the literary first kiss has to embody everybody’s dream of a kiss. It has to be steeped in longing. Kiss with a capital K. That’s a tall order, and that’s why I’ve avoided it for so long. But the time has come. In preparation, and to help my characters out a little, I’ve been evaluating literary kisses and asking people about their favorite ones. Some nominees…

The Princess Bride

“Since the invention of the kiss, there have only been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind.” S Morgenstern

Crank  

“He wanted to kiss me. I felt it with every nerve, every fiber, every molecule of my being. I wanted him to kiss me, with every nerve, every fiber, every molecule of my being. But I was scared to kiss him. Every nerve, every fiber, every molecule screamed! He leaned forward, parted those perfect lips. At that exact moment, every single thing about my life changed. Forever.”  Ellen Hopkins

Fault in Our Stars

“Augustus Waters,' I said, looking up at him, thinking that you cannot kiss anyone in the Anne Frank House, and then thinking that Anne Frank, after all, kissed someone in the Anne Frank House, and that she would probably like nothing more than for her home to have become a place where the young and irreparably broken sink into love....

And then we were kissing. My hand let go of the oxygen cart and I reached up for his neck, and he pulled me up by my waist onto my tiptoes. As his parted lips met mine, I started to feel breathless in a new and fascinating way. The space around us evaporated, and for a weird moment I really liked my body; this cancer-ruined thing I'd spent years dragging around suddenly seemed worth the struggle, worth the chest tubes and the PICC lines and the ceaseless bodily betrayal of the tumors,"  John Green

What are your favorite literary kisses?