That I have no right to be jealous is irrelevant. It is a human passion: the sick, white underbelly of love.
Anita ShreveRead
And she thought then how strange it was that disaster--the sort of disaster that drained the blood from your body and took the air out of your lungs and hit you again and again in the face--could be at times, such a thing of beauty.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Disasters can reveal unexpected beauty amidst chaos and suffering.
In this quote, Anita Shreve explores the paradox of disaster, highlighting how experiences that are typically seen as devastating can also unveil profound beauty and depth of human experience. The visceral imagery of physical pain juxtaposed with the notion of beauty suggests that moments of struggle can lead to valuable insights and appreciation for life in its entirety.
Themes
DisasterBeautySufferingParadoxExperience
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about resilience, one might quote this to illustrate the potential for beauty in hardship.
More from Anita Shreve
All quotes →A single action can cause a life to veer off in a direction it was never meant to go. Falling in love can do that, you think. And so can a wild party. You marvel at the way each has the power to forever alter an individual's compass. And it is the knowing that such a thing can so easily happen, as you did not know before, not really, that has fundamentally changed you and your son.
Anita ShreveRead
I learned that night that love is never as ferocious as when you think it is going to leave you. We are not always allowed this knowledge, and so our love sometimes becomes retrospective.
Anita ShreveRead
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