You imagine the carefully pruned, shaped thing that is presented to you is truth. That is just what it isn't. The truth is improbable, the truth is fantastic; it's in what you think is a distorting mirror that you see the truth.
Jean RhysRead
I watched her die many times. In my way, not in hers. In sunlight, in shadow, by moonlight, by candlelight. In the long afternoons when the house was empty. Only the sun was there to keep us company. We shut him out. And why not? Very soon she was as eager for what's called loving as I was - more lost and drowned afterwards.
Interpretation
The quote expresses deep feelings of loss and longing for a loved one, reflecting on the complexity of love and death.
In this poignant reflection, Jean Rhys articulates the repeated experience of watching a loved one suffer and ultimately die, emphasizing the emotional weight of love intertwined with loss. The imagery of light—sunlight, moonlight, and candlelight—symbolizes both presence and absence, suggesting that even as they shared moments of intimacy, the impending loss loomed large, echoing the profound impact of love that transforms into sorrow.
In practice
In a eulogy for a loved one, to express the depth of shared experiences.
You imagine the carefully pruned, shaped thing that is presented to you is truth. That is just what it isn't. The truth is improbable, the truth is fantastic; it's in what you think is a distorting mirror that you see the truth.
If I was bound for hell, let it be hell. No more false heaven. No more damned magic.
The musty smell, the bugs, the lonliness, this room, which is part of the street outside-this is all I want from life.
Yes, I am sad, sad as a circus-lioness, sad as an eagle without wings, sad as a violin with only one string and that one broken, sad as a woman who is growing old. Sad, sad, sad.
My life, which seems so simple and monotonous, is really a complicated affair of cafés where they like me and cafés where they don't, streets that are friendly, streets that aren't, rooms where I might be happy, rooms where I shall never be, looking-glasses I look nice in, looking-glasses I don't, dresses that will be lucky, dresses that won't, and so on.
I must write. If I stop writing my life will have been an abject failure. It is that already to other people. But it could be an abject failure to myself. I will not have earned death.
Dreamily the Princess stood up. "I'm not sure if I can walk," she said. "Then I'll carry you." "Is that what love is?" "I no longer know what love is. A week ago I had a lot of ideas. What love is and how to make it stay. Now that I'm in love, I haven't a clue. Now that I'm in love, I'm completely stupid on the subject.
You don't have to be born beautiful to be wildly attractive.
Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is better than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all. Amen, and come Lord Jesus.
Most people had an acquired kind of beauty, they became better looking the longer you knew them and the better you loved them, but Cole had unfairly skipped to the end of the game, all jaggedly handsome and Hollywood-looking. Not needing any love to get there.
A heart can no more be forced to love than a stomach can be forced to digest food by persuasion.
You were my hope during my days of loneliness, my anxiety during moments of doubt, my certainty during moments of faith.
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