I crossed the room, and what you did was to feel my hair over and over again and in different ways, touch it, with the palm of your hand... felt it, strands of hair, with your fingers, touched it as if it were cloth, the way a child touches its favorite surfaces.
Interpretation
This quote expresses a deep, tender moment of affection and intimacy.
In this quote, Edna O'Brien captures the beauty of a gentle and loving touch, illustrating how intimate gestures can convey profound emotions. The act of feeling someone's hair reflects not just physical attraction, but a deep appreciation and connection, reminiscent of the innocent ways children explore the world around them. It highlights the simplicity and significance of touch in human relationships.
In practice
During a romantic dinner, you might quote this to evoke the warmth of shared moments.
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.
To the degree you experience God's love towards you - seeing you as beautiful and radiant - to that degree sex won't ruin your life.
...I will exile my thoughts if they think of you again, and I will rip my lips out if they say your name once more. Now if you do exist, I will tell you my final word in life or in death, I tell you goodbye.
Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime, nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.
Her heart was broken perhaps, but it was a small inexpensive organ of local manufacture. In a wider and grander way she felt things had been simplified.
There is something in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.
The capacity to love is tied to being able to be awake, to being able to move out of yourself and be with someone else in a manner that is not about your desire to possess them, but to be with them, to be in union and communion.
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