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.
Love will fly if held too lightly Love will die if held too tightly . . .
If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger.
In spite of this trial, which takes all enjoyment from me, I can never the less, cry out, 'Lord, you fill me with joy in all that you do. For is there a joy greater than to suffer for love?'
I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.
What power has love but forgiveness? In other words by its intervention what has been done can be undone. What good is it otherwise?
His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him from beneath their cowl and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or revery, he had heard their tale before.
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