He breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in, as I had always done. I expelled my dust, the powder of everything I had destroyed with doubt, and he pulled it into his lungs.
We had loved people we really shouldn't have loved and then married other people in order to forget our impossible loves, or we had once called out hello into the cauldron of the world and then run away before anyone could respond.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on the complexities of love and the human tendency to flee from emotional vulnerability.
Miranda July's quote delves into the complexities of love and relationships, highlighting how individuals often find themselves in love with those who are unattainable or unsuitable, leading them to marry others in an attempt to forget their impossible loves. It also touches on the fleeting nature of connection, suggesting that sometimes we reach out for intimacy or recognition in the vastness of life, only to withdraw before we receive a response, thus missing out on deeper connections.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote is perfect for discussions on the complexities of love during a relationship seminar.
More from Miranda July
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After I had my son I looked everywhere for a book that might serve as some kind of mirror. I bought so many silly books. Now I see what the problem was: I wanted a book about time-about mortality. I can't think of a writer who is at once so experimentally daring and so rigorously uncompromising as Sarah Manguso. Ongoingness is an incredibly elegant, wise book, and I loved it.
Long before I started to write in earnest, Lorrie Moore taught me you could have a woman narrator who was funny and complex and even wrongheaded. She opened up a lot of space that me and a million other women rushed into.
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