I did not look for her, because I was afraid of dispelling the mystery we attach to people whom we know only casually.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the idea that knowing someone too closely can diminish the allure of mystery in relationships.
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette's quote suggests that the intrigue and fascination we hold for people we do not know well can be lost when we allow ourselves to become closer to them. This apprehension stems from the belief that familiarity can strip away the enchanting layers that make individuals captivating, leaving behind the mundane aspects of their personalities. In essence, it highlights the tension between the desire for intimacy and the fear of losing the mystique that surrounds our perceptions of others.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the complexities of relationships during a psychology class.
It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.
Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
I went to collect the few personal belongings which...I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.
The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen.
You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.
Truffles must come to the table in their own stock and as you break open this jewel sprung from a poverty-stricken soil, imagine - if you have never visited it - the desolate kingdom where it rules.
No one can fill those of your needs that you won't let show.
I know you want me back. It's time to face the facts. That I'm the one that's got away. Lord knows that it would take another place, another time, another world, another life. Thank God I found the good in goodbye.
Our marriage works because we each carry clubs of equal weight and size.
Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer more than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims....and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But - how can I put this? I'm almost......drawn to them.
This is what I miss, Cordelia: not something thatβs gone, but something that will never happen. Two old women giggling over their tea.
I have scars on my hands from touching certain people.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.