FOR WORDS OF TRUE LOVE, THERE'S INSPIRATION EVERYWHERE.

Byline: Sharon Cotal and Andrea Hescheles Daily News Staff Writers

How do you say I love you? Let us count the ways.

If you're a poet, a lyricist, a novelist or screenwriter, the challenge is neverending. But for the rest of us Jacks and Jills, there is Valentine's Day. And what do we do? Cede our heartfelt feelings to Hallmark.

Despite what we think, for most of us the muse of poetry has long ago moved away without leaving a forwarding address. But do you really want to express your love with some drippy lines written by God-knows-who in a little cubicle in Kansas City?

Like love, love lines are in the air. Or in some cases on the airwaves in songs and movies and even verse. Lose your Hallmark habit. OK, you can buy a Hallmark card, but buy a blank one. If you really care enough to send the very best, write your own epistle to the object of your affection. You don't have to pretend to be Shakespeare in love, but you can borrow from the Bard and others to tell the one you love how you feel.

So here are some suggestions to get you started. But whether it's from the king or Rick in Casablanca, remember it can be simple or profound, long or short. But one suggestion - keep it sweet.

LOVE LINES IN SONG

``You leave me breathless''

- Jerry Lee Lewis (``Breathless'')

``Maybe I'm amazed at the way you love me all the time

``Maybe I'm afraid of the way I love you''

- Paul McCartney (``Baby I'm Amazed'')

``Who knows how long I've loved you

Do you know I love you still?

Will I wait a lonely lifetime?

If you want me to I will''

- John Lennon and Paul McCartney (``I Will'')

``Oh, my love, my darling, I've hungered for your touch a long, lonely time.

Time goes by so slowly, and time can do so much, are you still mine?

- Hy Zaret (``Unchained Melody'')

My tongue gets tied when I try to speak

My insides shake like a leaf on a tree

There's only one cure for this body of mine

That's to have the gal that I love so fine!

- Elvis Presley (in Otis Blackwell's ``All Shook Up'')

``You're the top, you're the Colosseum,

you're the the Louvre museum, you're a melody from a symphony by Strauss, you're a bendel bonnet

a Shakespeare sonnet, you're Mickey Mouse

- Cole Porter (``You're the Top'')

``Baby let me be, around you ev'ry night

Run your fingers through my hair

And cuddle me real tight

Oh let me be your teddy bear

- Kal Mann and Bernie Lowe (Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear'')

``'Cause you, you light up my life

You give me hope to carry on

You light up my days and fill my nights with song''

- Joe Brooks (``You Light Up My Life'')

``Love can touch us one time

and last for a lifetime,

and never let go till we're gone.

Love was when I loved you,

one true time I hold to,

in my life we'll always go on.''

- James Horner and Will Jennings (``My Heart Will Go On'')

``For all the joy you brought to my life

For all the wrong that you made right

For every dream you made come true

For all the love I found in you

- Diane Warren (``Because You Loved Me'')

MOVIES

``I love thee with the breadth, smiles, tears of all my life. And if God chooses, I shall but love thee better after death.''

- Jennifer Jones as Elizabeth Barrett Browning,

pledging her love to Bill Travers as

Robert Browning in ``The Barretts

of Wimpole Street''

``Love is too weak a word for what I feel. I lurve you. I luff you.''

- Woody Allen to Diane Keaton

in ``Annie Hall''

``I'll love you all my life. I know that now. All my life.''

- Robert Taylor professing love

for a dying Greta Garbo

in ``Camille''

``You complete me.''

- Tom Cruise in ``Jerry Maguire''

``When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.''

- Billy Crystal in ``When Harry Met Sally ...''

``I love you because you love me and because you're warm and soft.'' - Montgomery Clift in ``Lonely Hearts''

``You need kissing badly - that's what's wrong with you. You should be kissed - and often. And by someone who knows how.''

- Clark Gable in ``Gone with the Wind''

``I love you, little fellow, I love you. I'd do murder for you.''

- Robert Ellis in ``Broadway''

``We'll always have Paris ...' (or city of your choice)

- Humphrey Bogart in ``Casablanca''

FOR THE TRULY POETIC MOMENT

``Sensual pleasure passes in the twinkling of an eye

but the friendship between us

the mutual confidence, the delight of the heart,

the enchantment of the soul

these things do not perish

and can never be destroyed.

I shall love you until I die.''

- Voltaire

``Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.''

- William Shakespeare, ``Sonnet XVIII''

``Thou art to me a delicious torment.''

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, ``Essays''

``The madness of love is the greatest of heaven's blessings.''

- Plato

``I am he that aches with amorous love;

Does the earth gravitate? Does not all matter, aching, attract all matter?

So the body of me to all I meet or know.''

- Walt Whitman, ``Leaves of Grass''

``Love gives itself; it is not bought.''

- Longfellow

``Oh, my Luve is like a red, red rose,

That's newly sprung in June.

O, my Luve is like the melodie,

That's sweetly played in tune.''

- Robert Burns

CAPTION(S):

5 Photos

Photo: (1) no caption (``Casablanca'')

(2) no caption (``Gone With the Wind'')

(3) no caption (Paul McCartney)

(4) no caption (Elvis Presley)

(5) no caption (William Shakespeare)