I did not look for her, because I was afraid of dispelling the mystery we attach to people whom we know only casually.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the idea that knowing someone too closely can diminish the allure of mystery in relationships.
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette's quote suggests that the intrigue and fascination we hold for people we do not know well can be lost when we allow ourselves to become closer to them. This apprehension stems from the belief that familiarity can strip away the enchanting layers that make individuals captivating, leaving behind the mundane aspects of their personalities. In essence, it highlights the tension between the desire for intimacy and the fear of losing the mystique that surrounds our perceptions of others.
In practice
This quote could be used in a discussion about the complexities of relationships during a psychology class.
It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses.
Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you're a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff's worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.
I went to collect the few personal belongings which...I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.
The only virtue on which I pride myself is my self-doubt; when a writer loses her self-doubt, the time has come to lay aside her pen.
You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.
Truffles must come to the table in their own stock and as you break open this jewel sprung from a poverty-stricken soil, imagine - if you have never visited it - the desolate kingdom where it rules.
When you say something really unkind, when you do something in retaliation your anger increases. You make the other person suffer, and he will try hard to say or to do something back to get relief from his suffering. That is how conflict escalates.
One of the reasons I'm on tour is to meet people. I consider it a reconnaissance. You know, I consider myself like in a military operation. I don't feel like a citizen.
There were many times when I had to emotionally come to terms with the fact that maybe I wasn't ever going to get married. And I started getting comfortable with that.
Imperfections are not inadequacies; they are reminders that we're all in this together.
She realized for the first time that two people can never reach each others deepest feelings and instincts, that they spend their lives side by side, linked it may be, but not mingled, and that each one's inmost being must go through life eternally alone.
The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun.
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