Some people don't understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said. "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway.
Interpretation
Love involves honoring commitments, even when circumstances make it difficult.
In this quote, John Green highlights the essence of love as a commitment that transcends mere intentions or feelings. It emphasizes that true love is demonstrated through the act of keeping promises, regardless of the challenges or misunderstandings that may arise, reflecting the depth and responsibility that comes with genuine affection.
In practice
This quote can be shared at a wedding ceremony to highlight the importance of promises in love.
Always' was a promise! How can you just break the promise?" "Sometimes people don't always understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said. Isaac shot me a look. "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway. Don't you believe in true love?" I didn't answer. I didn't have an answer. But I thought that if true love did exist, that was a pretty good definition of it.
Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should.
I find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults. I am an adult, and I used to be a teenager, and so I can tell you with some authority that my feelings then were as real as my feelings are now.
I don't think pandemics make us afraid of death, I think they make us afraid of oblivion. They force us to grapple with the futility of effort. Also they make us barf which isn't fun either... Wash your hands, cover your coughs, and find a way to hold in balance the futility of effort with the necessity to struggle.
So often we try to make other people feel better by minimizing their pain, by telling them that it will get better (which it will) or that there are worse things in the world (which there are). But that's not what I actually needed. What I actually needed was for someone to tell me that it hurt because it mattered. I have found this very useful to think about over the years, and I find that it is a lot easier and more bearable to be sad when you aren't constantly berating yourself for being sad.
We kiss. Her hands are freezing on my face, and she tastes like coffee and the smell of the onion is still stuck in my nose, and my lips are all dry from the endless winter. And it's awesome.
Love can be angry... with a kind of anger in which there is no gall, like the dove's and not the ravens.
Surfing for me is more than my lifestyle; it's my passion, my love and it's a part of me.
To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.
I'd sit around dreaming that the boys I saw at shows or at work - the boys with silver earrings and big boots - would tell me I was beautiful, take me home and feed me Thai food or omelets and undress me and make love to me all night with the palm trees whispering windsongs about a tortured gleaming city and the moonlight like flame melting our candle bodies.
Remember me and smile, for it's better to forget than to remember me and cry.
Love was the key to understanding all of the mysteries.
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