Through [my friends] I discovered what it was to love people. There was an art to it...which was not really all that different from the love that is necessary in the making of art. It required the effort of always seeing them for themselves and not as I wished them to be.
Interpretation
The quote reflects how love involves recognizing and appreciating people as they truly are, akin to the process of creating art.
Lucy Grealy emphasizes the deep connection between love and artistry, suggesting that both require an appreciation for authenticity. To truly love someone, one must see them for who they are, rather than trying to mold them into an idealized version of themselves, just as an artist must capture their subject's true essence.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a friendship celebration to highlight the importance of genuine love.
I spent five years of my life being treated for cancer, but since then I've spent fifteen years being treated for nothing other than looking different from everyone else. It was the pain from that, from feeling ugly, that I always viewed as the great tragedy of my life. The fact that I had cancer seemed minor in comparison.
When I tried to imagine being beautiful, I could only imagine living without the perpetual fear of being alone, without the great burden of isolation, which is what feeling ugly felt like.
I treated despair in terms of hierarchy: if there was a more important pain in the world, it meant my own was negated. I thought I simply had to accept the fact that I was ugly, and that to feel despair about it was simply wrong.
Love was just a word to me. Until you came along and gave it meaning.
Your persistent longing is your persistent voice. But when love grows cold, the heart grows silent. Burning love is the outcry of the heart! If you are filled with longing all the time, you will keep crying out, and if your love perseveres, your cry will be heard without fail.
If thou speakest not I will fill my heart with thy silence and endure it. I will keep still and wait like the night with starry vigil and its head bent low with patience. The morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish, and thy voice pour down in golden streams breaking through the sky. Then thy words will take wing in songs from every one of my birds' nests, and thy melodies will break forth in flowers in all my forest groves.
Just to be in love seemed the most blissful luxury I had ever known. The thought came to me that perhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return -- that perhaps true loving can never know anything but happiness. For a moment I felt that I had discovered a great truth.
There is an organic affinity between joyousness and tenderness.
Fair Katherine, and most fair,_x000D_ _x000D_ Will you vouchsafe to teach a soldier terms_x000D_ _x000D_ Such as will enter at a lady's ear,_x000D_ _x000D_ And plead his love-suit to her gentle heart?
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.