She dreams a lot. She dreams of Ondines and falling maidens and houses burning in the night. But search her dreams all you like and you'll never find Prince Charming. No knight on a white horse gallops into her dreams to carry her away. When she dreams of love, she dreams of smashed potatoes.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the unrealistic expectations some people have about love and romance, contrasting them with more mundane realities.
In this quote, Jerry Spinelli explores the idea that dreams and romantic fantasies often do not align with the reality of love. While the protagonist indulges in vivid and whimsical dreams, they ultimately reveal the absence of a perfect romantic hero, suggesting that true love may be imperfect, awkward, and less magical than often depicted in stories.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a discussion about love's true nature at a relationship seminar.
I listen to the summer symphony outside my window. Truthfully, it's not a symphony at all. There's no tune, no melody, only the same notes over and over. Chirps and tweets and trills and burples. It's as if the insect orchestra is forever tuning its instruments, forever waiting for the maestro to tap his baton and bring them to order. I, for one, hope the maestro never comes. I love the music mess of it.
A mockingbird has moved into our neighborhood. It perches atop a telephone pole behind our backyard. Every morning it is the first thing I hear. It is impossible to be unhappy when listening to a mockingbird. So stuffed with songs it is, it can't seem to make up it's mind which to sing first, so it sings them all, a dozen different songs at once, in a dozen different voices. On and on it sings without a pause, so peppy, even frantic, as if its voice alone is keeping the world awake.
Because that's what you do, you stand up for your best friend. And you eat lunch with him and talk with him and share secrets and laugh a lot and go places and do stuff, and when you wake up in the morning, he's the first person you think of.
No one's hurt is too small, no worry too removed, no blessing so elusive that it cannot be seen by the eyes in the back of the human heart.
A baseball bat could not have hit me harder than that smile did. I was sixteen years old. In that time, how many thousands of smiles had been aimed at me? so why did this one feel like the first?
She laughed when there was no joke. She danced when there was no music. She had no friends, yet she was the friendliest person in school.
He takes her in his arms He wants to say I love you, nothing can hurt you But he thinks this is a lie, so he says in the end You're dead, nothing can hurt you which seems to him a more promising beginning, more true.
down from his brow she ran his curls like thick hyacinth clusters full of blooms
And in this passion for understanding her soul lay close to his; she had him all to herself. But he must be made abstract first.
JAQUES: Rosalind is your love's name? ORLANDO: Yes, just. JAQUES: I do not like her name. ORLANDO: There was no thought of pleasing you when she was christened.
If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.
The God of love my shepherd is, And he that doth me feed: While he is mine, and I am his, What can I want or need?
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