His face contained for me all possibilities of fierceness and sweetness, pride and submissiveness, violence, self-containment. I never saw more in it than I had when I saw it first, because I saw everything then. The whole thing in him that I was going to love, and never catch or explain.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the complexity of love, showing how it encompasses both strength and vulnerability.
Alice Munro's quote illustrates the multifaceted nature of love and attraction. It reveals how our first impressions can encapsulate a broad spectrum of emotions and characteristics in a person, blending fierce qualities with gentle ones, pride with humility. This complexity can be overwhelming, leading to a deep affection that is difficult to define or grasp fully, highlighting the mysterious and profound aspects of romantic feelings.
In practice
This quote can be used during a wedding speech to express the complexity of human relationships.
Sometimes our connection is frayed, it is in danger, it seems almost lost. Views and streets deny knowledge of us, the air grows thin. Wouldn't we rather have a destiny to submit to, than, something that claims us, anything, instead of such flimsy choices, arbitrary days?
I was amazed as people must be who are seized and kidnapped, and who realize that in the strange world of their captors they have a value absolutely unconnected with anything they know about themselves.
Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.
I just believed it easily, the way you might believe and in fact remember that you once had another set of teeth, now vanished but real in spite of that. Until one day, one day when I may even have been in my teens, I knew with a dim sort of hole in my insides that now I didn't believe it anymore.
You want in all cases for the story to get through the writing.
A story is not like a road to follow... it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside it altered by being viewed from these windows.
That she had somehow taken the initiative to learn my name should have struck me then, but it did not. Instead, as she stood on the street with the rain coming down and mascara running onto her cheeks, all I could think was that I'd never seen anyone more beautiful.
Passion is the energy that love creates with no object other than itself.
Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.
When you truly love yourself, you don't have enemies. They may hate you but you're too big to hate them back.
Young poets bewail the passing of love; old poets, the passing of time. There is surprisingly little difference.
Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.