I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it, on the inside.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the desire for mutual affection while emphasizing the importance of emotional vulnerability.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's quote captures the duality of human relationships where one seeks acceptance and affection from others, yet remains guarded about their deeper emotions. It highlights the balance between being sociable and maintaining personal boundaries, suggesting that while we enjoy being liked, the true essence of our emotions is often hidden from view, reserved for those we truly trust.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a discussion on emotional honesty in friendships.
Don't be so anxious about it,' she laughed. 'I'm not used to being loved. I wouldn't know what to do; I never got the trick of it.' She looked down at him, shy and fatigued. 'So here we are. I told you years ago that I had the makings of Cinderella.' He took her hand; she drew it back instinctively and then replaced it in his. 'Beg your pardon. Not even used to being touched. But I'm not afraid of you, if you stay quiet and don't move suddenly.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
It was about then [1920] that I wrote a line which certain people will not let me forget: "She was a faded but still lovely woman of twenty-seven."
The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.
But you can love more than just one person, can't you?
A sudden gust of rain blew over them and then another - as if small liquid clouds were bouncing along the land. Lightning entered the sea far off and the air blew full of crackling thunder. The table cloths blew around the pillars. They blew and blew and blew. The flags twisted around the red chairs like live things, the banners were ragged, the corners of the table tore off through the burbling billowing ends of the cloths.
They say it's the white man I should fear, But it's my own kind doin' all the killin' here.
Being 'ethnically ambiguous', as I was pegged in the industry, meant I could audition for virtually any role. Morphing from Latina when I was dressed in red, to African American when in mustard yellow, my closet filled with fashionable frocks to make me look as racially varied as an Eighties Benetton poster.
My single young friends, we counsel you to channel your associations with the opposite sex into dating patterns that have the potential to mature into marriage, not hanging-out patterns that only have the prospect to mature into team sports like touch football. Marriage is not a group activity—at least not until the children come along in goodly numbers
That her relationship with him was like being content in a house but always sitting by the window and looking out
She seemed to think that one of the perks of marriage was that it gave you rights of comment and intrusion over single people's love lives.
For many years now, I feel like my own body struggle has been linked and connected with women I meet in the world. I think we're in this together.
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