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.
a young woman in love always looks like patience on a monument smiling at grief
Lovers don't meet in the end, they are in each other forever.
We ate well and cheaply and drank well and cheaply and slept well and warm together and loved each other.
Affection is a coal that must be cooled; else, suffered, it will set the heart on fire.
We all have this fantasy of finding our one true love who's going to be the perfect fit. It's just not a reality.
How far away the stars seem, and how far is our first kiss, and ah, how old my heart.
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