And the flavor of Pippa's kiss--bittersweet and strange--stayed with me all the way back uptown, swaying and sleepy as I sailed home on the bus, melting with sorrow and loveliness, a starry ache that lifted me up above the windswept city like a kite: my head in the rainclouds, my heart in the sky.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the complex emotions associated with love, blending joy and sorrow into a bittersweet experience.
In this quote, Donna Tartt captures the profound and often contradictory feelings that accompany love. The 'bittersweet' nature of Pippa's kiss evokes a sense of longing and nostalgia, suggesting that love is not solely about happiness but also includes elements of sadness and yearning. The imagery of swaying on the bus and feeling both 'sorrow and loveliness' highlights the transformative power of love, which can elevate one's spirit even in moments of sadness.
In practice
During a speech about the complexities of love, one might include this quote to illustrate the profound feelings involved.
Does such a thing as 'the fatal flaw,' that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn't. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.
Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only—if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn’t it? And isn’t the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty?
But sometimes, unexpectedly, grief pounded over me in waves that left me gasping; and when the waves washed back, I found myself looking out over a brackish wreck which was illumined in a light so lucid, so heartsick and empty, that I could hardly remember that the world had ever been anything but dead.
Does such a thing as "the fatal flaw," that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature?
I've written only two novels, but they're both long ones, and they each took a decade to write.
The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I’ve read so often that I’ve internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out.
Be a loving person rather than in a love relationship - because relationships happen one day and disappear another day. They are flowers; in the morning they bloom, by the evening they are gone.
A happy ending was imperative. I shouldn't have bothered to write otherwise. I was determined that in fiction anyway two men should fall in love and remain in it for the ever and ever that fiction allows, and in this sense, Maurice and Alec still roam the greenwood.
She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.
Reason is powerless in the expression of Love.
If we make our goal to live a life of compassion and unconditional love, then the world will indeed become a garden where all kinds of flowers can bloom and grow.
I am convinced that unconditional love is the most powerful known stimulant of the immune system. If I told patients to raise their blood levels of immune globulins or killer T cells, no one would know how. But if I can teach them to love themselves and others fully, the same changes happen automatically. The truth is: love heals.
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