Oh, love, what an unreasoning creature it grew to be.
Interpretation
Love can be irrational and difficult to understand.
In this quote, Edna O'Brien reflects on the unpredictable and often irrational nature of love, suggesting that it can lead to emotions and actions that defy logic and reason. This captures the complexity of romantic feelings, highlighting that love can sometimes make us act contrary to our better judgment or understanding.
In practice
During a wedding speech to illustrate the complexities of love.
Love . . . is like nature, but in reverse; first it fruits, then it flowers, then it seems to wither, then it goes deep, deep down into its burrow, where no one sees it, where it is lost from sight, and ultimately people die with that secret buried inside their souls.
That is the mystery about writing: it comes out of afflictions, out of the gouged times, when the heart is cut open.
Cities, in many ways, are the best repositories for a love affair. You are in a forest or a cornfield, you are walking by the seashore, footprint after footprint of trodden sand, and somehow the kiss or the spoken covenant gets lost in the vastness and indifference of nature. In a city there are places to remind us of what has been.
Darkness is drawn to light, but light does not know it; light must absorb the darkness and therefore meet its own extinguishment.
Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it.
It was the first time that I came face to face with madness and feared it and was fascinated by it.
Is not poetry the food of love?
Her heart was a secret garden and the walls were very high.
I was in the parking lot, with the key in the car, and I thought to myself: If this is my last night on earth, would I rather spend it at a business meeting or with this woman? I ran across the parking lot, asked her if she'd have dinner with me. She said yes, we walked into town, and we've been together ever since.
And Father said, "Christopher, do you understand that I love you?" And I said "Yes," because loving someone is helping them when they get into trouble, and looking after them, and telling them the truth, and Father looks after me when I get into trouble, like coming to the police station, and he looks after me by cooking meals for me, and he always tells me the truth, which means that he loves me.
The proof of true love is to be unsparing in criticism.
She might be a great person, but life's so much bigger than just loving someone.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.