I wanted to wear her as you would a piece of clothing, to fold into her ribs, be a stone in her mouth.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a deep desire for intimacy and connection with another person.
In this quote, Hisham Matar uses vivid imagery to convey an intense longing for emotional and physical closeness. The speaker's wish to 'wear' the other person like clothing signifies a profound desire to become one with them, to envelop and be enveloped by their essence, indicating the depth of love and connection one can feel towards a significant other.
In practice
This quote could be used in a wedding speech to express deep love.
Dreams have consequences. There is no turning back. A revolution is not a painless march to the gates of freedom and justice. It is a struggle between rage and hope, between the temptation to destroy and the desire to build. Its temperament is desperate. It is a tormented response to the past, to all that has happened, the recalled and unrecalled injustices - for the memory of a revolution reaches much further back than the memory of its protagonists.
Love built on beauty, soon as beauty, dies.
But you make me sing like a guitar humming . . .
And then I saw him and nothing was ever the same again. The sky was never the same colour, the moon never the same shape: the air never smelt the same, food never tasted the same. Every word I knew changed its meaning, everything that once was stable and firm became as insubstantial as a puff of wind, and every puff of wind became a solid thing I could feel and touch.
Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do, but how much love we put in the action that we do.
One would always want to think of oneself as being on the side of love, ready to recognize it and wish it well -but, when confronted with it in others, one so often resented it, questioned its true nature, secretly dismissed the particular instance as folly or promiscuity. Was it merely jealousy, or a reluctance to admit so noble and enviable a sentiment in anyone but oneself?
To be loved but not known is comforting but superficial. To be known and not loved is our greatest fear. But to be fully known and truly loved is, well, a lot like being loved by God. It is what we need more than anything. It liberates us from pretense, humbles us out of our self-righteousness, and fortifies us for any difficulty life can throw at us.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.