Cities, in many ways, are the best repositories for a love affair. You are in a forest or a cornfield, you are walking by the seashore, footprint after footprint of trodden sand, and somehow the kiss or the spoken covenant gets lost in the vastness and indifference of nature. In a city there are places to remind us of what has been.
Interpretation
Cities provide a backdrop that helps preserve memories of love, contrasting with the indifference of nature.
This quote by Edna O'Brien suggests that cities serve as living archives of love and romance. Unlike nature, which can often feel vast and indifferent, urban environments are filled with specific places that spark memories and emotions connected to past relationships, making them more meaningful and evocative reminders of love.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the significance of urban landscapes in romantic relationships.
Love . . . is like nature, but in reverse; first it fruits, then it flowers, then it seems to wither, then it goes deep, deep down into its burrow, where no one sees it, where it is lost from sight, and ultimately people die with that secret buried inside their souls.
That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open.
Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore meet its own extinguishment.
Oh, love, what an unreasoning creature it grew to be.
Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it.
It was the first time that I came face to face with madness and feared it and was fascinated by it.
Love, Fear, and Esteem, - Write these on three stones.
She was in pain and I loved her, sort of loved her, I guess, so I kind of had to love her pain, too.
I particularly recollect your saying one night, after they had been dining at Netherfield, 'SHE a beauty!--I should as soon call her mother a wit.' But afterwards she seemed to improve on you, and I believe you thought her rather pretty at one time." "Yes," replied Darcy, who could contain himself no longer, "but THAT was only when I first saw her, for it is many months since I have considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.
Christian, learn from Christ how you ought to love Christ. Learn a love that is tender, wise, strong; love with tenderness, not passion, wisdom, not foolishness, and strength, lest you become weary and turn away from the love of the Lord.
But who can distinguish between falling in love and imagining falling in love? Even genuinely falling in love is an act of the imagination.
Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.
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