Reading a poem in translation is like kissing a woman through a veil.
Anne MichaelsRead
Love makes you see a place differently, just as you hold differently an object that belongs to someone you love. If you know one landscape well, you will look at all other landscapes differently. And if you learn to love one place, sometimes you can also learn to love another.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Love changes our perception of the world around us.
This quote by Anne Michaels emphasizes the transformative power of love in how we perceive our surroundings. When we love a person or a place, our relationship with it deepens, allowing us to see beauty and significance where we might have overlooked it before. The act of loving shapes and enriches our experiences, suggesting that once we learn to appreciate one landscape or relationship, we can extend that love and understanding to others.
Themes
LovePerceptionLandscapeAppreciationExperience
In practice
Example use cases
In a wedding speech to highlight how love transforms our perception of life.
More from Anne Michaels
All quotes →Hold a book in your hand and you're a pilgrim at the gates of a new city.
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When my parents were liberated, four years before I was born, they found that the ordinary world outside the camp had been eradicated. There was no more simple meal, no thing was less than extraordinary: a fork, a mattress, a clean shirt, a book. Not to mention such things that can make one weep: an orange, meat and vegetables, hot water. There was no ordinariness to return to, no refuge from the blinding potency of things, an apple screaming its sweet juice.
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If love wants you; if you've been melted down to stars, you will love with lungs and gills; with feathers and scales; with warm blood and cold.
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Long after you’ve forgotten someone’s voice, you can still remember the sound of their happiness or their sadness. You can feel it in your body.
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There's a moment when love makes you believe in death for the first time. You recognize the one whose loss, even contemplated, you'll carry forever, like a sleeping child. All grief, anyone's grief...is the weight of a sleeping child.
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