Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love it.
Stephen KingRead
He's a very nice man and all that, easy to get along with, fun, he never makes me cry. But is that love? I mean, is that all there is to it? Even when you learned to ride your two-wheeler, you had to fall off a few times and scrape both knees. Call it a rite of passage. And that was just a little thing.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote questions whether a comfortable relationship is truly love, suggesting that love involves challenges and deeper experiences.
In this quote, Stephen King reflects on the nature of love, highlighting that a relationship characterized by ease and fun may lack the depth and complexity that define true love. He uses the metaphor of learning to ride a bicycle, which involves falling and overcoming challenges, to emphasize that real love often entails navigating difficulties and emotional struggles, marking a more profound connection between individuals.
Themes
LoveRelationshipsChallengesPassageDepth
In practice
Example use cases
During a wedding speech to highlight the complexities of love.
More from Stephen King
All quotes →Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.
Stephen KingRead
Hairstyles change, and skirt lengths, and slang, but high school administrations? Never.
Stephen KingRead
Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.
Stephen KingRead
That's the day's business. Thinking. Thinking and isolation, because it doesn't matter if you pass the time of day with someone or not; in the end, you're alone. He seemed to have put in as many miles in his brain as he had with his feet. The thoughts kept coming and there was no way to deny them.
Stephen KingRead
Late last night and the night before, tommyknockers, tommyknockers knocking on my door. I wanna go out, don't know if I can 'cuz I'm so afraid of the tommyknocker man.
Stephen KingRead
Similar quotes
If thou speakest not I will fill my heart with thy silence and endure it. I will keep still and wait like the night with starry vigil and its head bent low with patience. The morning will surely come, the darkness will vanish, and thy voice pour down in golden streams breaking through the sky. Then thy words will take wing in songs from every one of my birds' nests, and thy melodies will break forth in flowers in all my forest groves.
Rabindranath TagoreRead
Because that is when you love somebody - when you see them being game in the face of the worst. Not courageous. Not heroic. Just game.
Philip RothRead
Love is not consolation, it is light.
Simone WeilRead
Ah, when to the heart of man Was it ever less than a treason To go with the drift of things, To yield with a grace to reason, And bow and accept the end Of a love or a season?
Robert FrostRead
If you have ever gone into the woods with me, I must love you very much.
Mary OliverRead
To reach out to you when I'm in need, and to try to be here for you when you need me back. And to feel such tenderness when I look at you that I want to stand between you and all the world: and yet also to lift you up and carry you above the strong currents of life; and at the same time, I would be glad to stand always like this, at a distance, watching you, the beauty of you.
Orson Scott CardRead