We burned with love for ourselves, all of us, starters of the fire we suffered- our love was the affliction for which only our love was the cure.
Jonathan Safran FoerRead
She wants to know if I love her, that's all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet.
Interpretation
What this quote means
People seek reassurance of love more than love itself.
This quote by Jonathan Safran Foer encapsulates the idea that individuals desire affirmation of love from others rather than the abstract concept of love. Just as batteries are essential for the functioning of a flashlight in an emergency, the knowledge of being loved provides comfort and reassurance in relationships.
Themes
LoveReassuranceRelationshipsComfortAffection
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about relationships, one might use this quote to emphasize the importance of expressing love.
More from Jonathan Safran Foer
All quotes →Memory was supposed to fill the time, but it made time a hole to be filled. Each second was two hundred yards, to be walked, crawled. You couldn't see the next hour, it was so far in the distance. Tomorrow was over the horizon, and would take an entire day to reach.
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What is being awake if not interpreting our dreams, or dreaming if not interpreting our wake?
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Similar quotes
I loved you so much once. I did. More than anything in the whole wide world. Imagine that. What a laugh that is now. Can you believe it? We were so intimate once upon a time I can't believe it now. The memory of being that intimate with somebody. We were so intimate I could puke. I can't imagine ever being that intimate with somebody else. I haven't been.
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'Lord you know that I love you...Lord, you know that I love you' (Jn 21:15-17). The Eucharist is, in a certain way, the culminating point of this answer. I wish to repeat it together with the whole Church to Him, who manifested His love by means of the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, remaining with us 'to the close of the age'
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Set me free from evil passions, and heal my heart of all inordinate affections; that being inwardly cured and thoroughly cleansed, I may be made fit to love, courageous to suffer, steady to persevere.
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A dog doesn't care if you're rich or poor, educated or illiterate, clever or dull. Give him your heart and he will give you his.
John GroganRead