She always had to have someone to love...She couldn't seem to believe that anyone could really love her. She always thought it was because she was a star, not just because of her herself, and she always had to be reassured.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the need for reassurance in love and the struggle of self-worth.
In this quote, Madeleine L'Engle reflects on the inherent insecurities that can accompany the experience of love, particularly for someone in the public eye. The character's dependence on external validation for her worth suggests that, despite being a star, she feels inadequate and seeks consistent affirmation of love from others, indicating a deeper issue of self-acceptance and the complexity of human relationships.
In practice
In a personal development seminar discussing self-love and relationships.
Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.
George MacDonald gives me renewed strength during times of trouble--times when I have seen people tempted to deny God--when he says, "The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like his.
If you don't recount your family history, it will be lost. Honor your own stories and tell them too. The tales may not seem very important, but they are what binds families and makes each of us who we are.
I never want to lose the story-loving child within me, or the adolescent, or the young woman, or the middle-aged one, because all together they help me to be fully alive on this journey, and show me that I must be willing to go where it takes me, even through the valley of the shadow.
The minute we begin to think we have all the answers, we forget the questions.
When we believe in the impossible, it becomes possible, and we can do all kinds of extraordinary things.
Nor jealousy Was understood, the injur'd lover's hell.
Because that is when you love somebody - when you see them being game in the face of the worst. Not courageous. Not heroic. Just game.
We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love.
I desire to press in my arms the loveliness which has not yet come into the world.
Do you know what friendship is?' he asked. 'Yes,' replied the gypsy; 'it is to be brother and sister; two souls which touch without mingling, two fingers on one hand.' 'And love?' pursued Gringoire. 'Oh! love!' said she, and her voice trembled, and her eye beamed. 'That is to be two and to be but one. A man and a woman mingled into one angel. It is heaven.
But he doesn't love her. I invented that. It is a plot if you imagine people in love--the lazy looping criss crosses of love, blows, stares, tears. No. It doesn't happen. No love. People meet, touch, stare into one another's faces, shake their heads clear, move on, forget. It doesn't happen.
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