We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the complexities of love, suggesting that loving someone can mean different things but often requires skill or can become an obsession.
Margaret Atwood's quote explores the nuanced nature of love, indicating that while love is genuine between individuals, it is not always easy or straightforward. The reference to love as either a talent or an addiction highlights the different ways people experience and express love, suggesting that while some may excel in the art of loving, for others, it can become an unhealthy dependency.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a discussion about the challenges of romantic relationships.
If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.
I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.
Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.
This is the middle of my life, I think of it as a place, like the middle of a river, the middle of a bridge, halfway across, halfway over. I'm supposed to have accumulated things by now: possessions, responsibilities, achievements, experience and wisdom. I'm supposed to be a person of substance.
Honesty, disinterestedness and good nature are indispensable to procure the esteem and confidence of those with whom we live, and on whose esteem our happiness depends.
Be honest, brutally honest. That is what's going to maintain relationships.
You are not reconciled to God if you are unreconciled with your fellow human beings.
Prop 8 did something that no other state in the history of this country has done. It took away the rights of people that already were legally affirmed. Imagine someone putting something on the ballot saying your wedding, your marriage is no longer valid.
The one joy that has kept me going through life has been the fact that stories unite us. To see you as you listen to me now, as you have always listened to me, is to know this: what I can believe, you can believe. And the way we all see our story-not just as Irish people but as flesh and blood individuals and not the way people tell us to see it-that's what we own, no matter who we are and where we come from.
The essential problems remain the same... The kids I write about are asking for the same things I wanted. They want two contradictory things. They want to be the same as everyone else, and they want to be different from everyone else. They want acceptance for both.
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