Tonight, tonight, won't be just any night. Tonight there will be no morning star.
I'm before him on my knees, and he kisses me He assumes I lose my reason and I do. Men are stupid, men are vain, Love's disgusting, love's insane, A humiliating business-oh how true.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the complexities and absurdities of love, including feelings of humiliation and irrationality.
In this quote, Stephen Sondheim captures the paradoxical nature of love, portraying it as both enchanting and humiliating. The speaker finds themselves in a subordinate position, highlighting how love can make one feel powerless and absurd, emphasizing the frustration and insanity often associated with romantic relationships. This raw confession reveals the vulnerability and the darker aspects of love, suggesting that while love can be beautiful, it can also lead to feelings of folly and disillusionment.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote is perfect for a discussion on the challenges of romantic relationships during a relationship counseling session.
More from Stephen Sondheim
All quotes →After the Rodgers and Hammerstein revolution, songs became part of the story, as opposed to just entertainments in between comedy scenes.
Musical comedies aren't written, they are rewritten.
Let Pirelli's / Miracle Elixir / Activate your roots, sir... Keep it off your boots, sir- / Eats right through. Yes, get Pirelli's! / Use a bottle of it! / Ladies seem to love it... Flies do, too!
Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos.
Careful the spell you cast, not just on children. Sometimes the spell may last Past what you can see And turn against you... Careful the tale you tell. That is the spell.
Similar quotes
You know, for me, the realization that two people should have the right to form a sacred union regardless of their gender was strengthened when I saw a performance of the play The Normal Heart in 1985. After feeling the love those two men had for each other, I dare anybody not to want them to get married by the end.
When I find a woman attractive, I have nothing at all to say. I simply watch her smile. Intellectuals take apart her face in order to explain it bit by bit, but they no longer see the smile.
The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface: and why not? Any love is natural and beautiful that lies within a person's nature; only hypocrites would hold a man responsible for what he loves, emotional illiterates and those of righteous envy, who, in their agitated concern, mistake so frequently the arrow pointing to heaven for the one that leads to hell.
Only through loving and supporting one another, even in the face of unbearable pain and suffering, will this cycle of violence end.
The ones I loved fly as birds in the open sky above me. Soaring, weaving, calling to me to join them. I want so badly to follow them, but the seawater saturates my wings, making it impossible to lift them. The ones I hated have taken to the water, horrible scaled things that tear my salty flesh with needle teeth. Biting again and again. Dragging me beneath the surface.
Love, the most generous passion of the mind _x000D_ The softest refuge innocence can find