But maybe, underneath, she loves him too much. Maybe it's her excessive love that pushes him away.
Interpretation
Excessive love can sometimes drive people apart rather than bring them closer.
In this quote, Margaret Atwood explores the complexity of love and relationships, suggesting that overwhelming affection may lead to distance between partners. It implies that while love is often seen as a bonding force, an excess of it can create pressure or neediness that ultimately drives the other person away, highlighting the paradoxical nature of emotional connection.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a discussion about the challenges of maintaining healthy relationships.
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.
Life cannot be without relationship, but we have made it so agonizing and hideous by basing it on personal and possessive love. Can one love and yet not possess? You will find the true answer not in escape, ideals, beliefs but through the understanding of the causes of dependence and possessiveness.
...as long as nothing happens between them, the memory is cursed with what hasn't happened.
I'm all for any place, any way, any media that can help people connect with somebody and not be lonely.
Listening, not imitation, may be the sincerest form of flattery.
I want to touch you in real time not find you on YouTube, I want to walk next to you in the mountains not friend you on Facebook.
Beloved, you are my sister, you are my daughter, you are my face; you are me.
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