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.
We do right enough darling, if we go wrong together.
But loneliness is as delusive a belief in the pertinence of the world as is love: in choosing to feel lonely, as in choosing to love, one carves a space next to oneself to be filled by others - a friend, a lover, a toy poodle, a violinist on the radio.
The question is always whether all of Baltimore will rise together or whether we will leave some behind.
The married state, with and without the affection suitable to it, is the completest image of heaven and hell we are capable of receiving in this life.
Forgiveness to the injured does belong; but they ne'er pardon who have done wrong.
You see, women are like fires, like flames. Some women are like candles, bright and friendly. Some are like single sparks, or embers, like fireflies for chasing on summer nights. Some are like campfires, all light and heat for a night and willing to be left after. Some women are like hearthfires, not much to look at but underneath they are all warm red coal that burns a long, long while.
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