She said the reason that love is so painful is that it always amounts to two people wanting more than two people can give.
Interpretation
Love can be painful because it often leads to unfulfilled expectations.
This quote by Edna O'Brien suggests that love is inherently complicated and often fraught with pain because both individuals in a relationship tend to have desires and expectations that exceed what they can realistically provide to one another. The struggle for emotional fulfillment and connection can lead to feelings of disappointment and heartache when those needs are not met.
In practice
In a speech about the complexities of romantic relationships, one might say, 'As Edna O'Brien noted, love often brings pain due to unmet expectations.'
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.
Oh, love, what an unreasoning creature it grew to be.
Recollection is not something that I can summon up, it simply comes and I am the servant of it.
They sin who tell us Love can die: with Life all other passions fly, all others are but vanity.
I love three things," I then say. "I love a dream of love I once had, I love you, and I love this patch of earth." "And which do you love best?" "The dream.
Follow the Golden Rule. Be kind to your neighbors, love them as much as you would love yourself, do unto others.
Might she have loved me? just as well She might have hated, who can tell!
I don't hate you, I love you, you're part of myself, you're my heart and when you go it's my heart torn out and carried away--
The worst prison would be a closed heart.
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