Why is the measure of love loss?
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the idea that love is often understood through the experience of loss.
Jeanette Winterson's quote suggests that love is deeply intertwined with loss, prompting us to consider how our feelings of love are often realized and measured based on what we have lost. It highlights the bittersweet nature of love, where the absence of a loved one or the end of a relationship can define the depth of our emotions, prompting reflection on the significance of love in our lives and how it resonates with moments of grief and longing.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the complexities of human emotions and relationships.
What is remembered is not a deed in stone but a metaphor. Meta = above. Pheren = to carry. That which is carried above the literalness of life. A way of thinking that avoids the problems of gravity. The word won't let me down. The single word that can release me from all that unuttered weight.
Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become.
I have a list of titles that I leave at the [library] desk, because they are bound to be written some day, and it's best to be ahead of the queue.
Woolf wanted to say dangerous things in Orlando but she did not want to say them in the missionary position.
In that house, you will find my heart. You must break in, Henri, and get it back for me.' Was she mad? We had been talking figuratively. Her heart was in her body like mine. I tried to explain this to her, but she took my hand and put it against her chest. Feel for yourself.
History is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe tie it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing.
Over my head his arm he flung, Against the world.
Christmas is a season for kindling the fire for hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.
The mechanics of love imply some sort of bridge between the sensual and the spiritual, sometimes to the point of deification; the notion of an afterlife is implicit not only in our couplings, but also in our separations.
...if you ever wonder what you've done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God's grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle.
Woe, alas, to those who have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will rob them of everything. Try to love souls, you will find them again.
But mostly I wondered why the head could move so swiftly while the heart dragged its feet. I still loved him. It felt like anything else permanent that has gone missing; a lost tooth, a severed leg. You might know better, but that doesnβt keep your tongue from poling at the hole in your gum, or your phantom limb from aching.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.