I'll make you mine, lovers said in old books. They never said, I'll make you me.
Interpretation
The quote contrasts the traditional view of love with a more individualistic perspective, suggesting that true love should emphasize individuality and the self.
Margaret Atwood's quote reflects on the often romanticized notion of love, where the phrase 'I'll make you mine' implies possession and ownership, common in literature. In contrast, Atwood challenges this idea by proposing that true love should focus on the partners' individuality and self-identity, highlighting the need for personal growth and self-fulfillment within relationships rather than a merger of identities.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a discussion about healthy relationships and individuality.
If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.
I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.
I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.
Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.
Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself.
The universe is intentional. It is always moving in the direction of greater love, regardless whether or not we consciously align with that love.
What if sometimes there is no choice about what to love? What if the temple comes to Mohammed? What if you just love? without deciding? You just do: you see her and in that instant are lost to sober account-keeping and cannot choose but to love?
Only the chaste man and the chaste woman are capable of true love.
I am bewildered by the death of love. And my responsibility for it.
Charity should begin at home, but should not stay there.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.