Growing up, a film was an action film or it was a comedy or it was romantic, but you don’t really see such stark lines between genres nowadays.
I’d like to be played as a child by Natalie Wood. I’d have some romantic scenes as Audrey Hepburn and have gritty black-and-white scenes as Patricia Neal.
You do your work as a photographer and everything becomes past. Words are more like thoughts; the photographer’s picture is always surrounded by a kind of romantic glamor – no matter what you do, and how you twist it.
In our romantic groves I adored her like a divinity.
We are in desperate need of a well-done romantic lesbian comedy.
Vulnerability is the essence of romance. It’s the art of being uncalculated, the willingness to look foolish, the courage to say, ‘This is me, and I’m interested in you enough to show you my flaws with the hope that you may embrace me for all that I am but, more important, all that I am not.’
Today I begin to understand what love must be, if it exists… When we are parted, we each feel the lack of the other half of ourselves. We are incomplete like a book in two volumes of which the first has been lost. That is what I imagine love to be: incompleteness in absence.
It is really rare to find someone you really, really love and that you want to spend your life with and all that stuff that goes along with being married. I am one of those lucky people. And I think she feels that way too. So the romantic stuff is easy because you want them to be happy.
I’m a hopeless romantic and I believe that you can find love in many different places and be very conflicted. I’ve discovered as I’ve grown up that life is far more complicated than you think it is when you’re a kid. It isn’t just a straightforward fairytale.
Falling in love, romance, matters of the heart – when you fall in love, on some biochemical level you know there is a chance it won’t work out. It’s ingrained in us that if you take such an enormous risk on someone with your heart that it might not pay off. I gamble all my chips and I might actually lose everything.
I’m a feminist, but I think that romance has been taken away a bit for my generation. I think what people connect with in novels is this idea of an overpowering, encompassing love – and it being more important and special than anything and everything else.
I think one of the downsides of the sort of obsession with romantic love and personal fulfillment is that the plain fact of the matter is that those feelings don’t last for ever and so they better be replaced and reinforced by things that do.
The thing is that love gives us a ringside seat on somebody else’s flaws, so of course you’re gonna spot some things that kinda need to be mentioned. But often the romantic view is to say, ‘If you loved me, you wouldn’t criticise me.’ Actually, true love is often about trying to teach someone how to be the best version of themselves.
My great-grandfather was prime minister of Canada, and I had a very Edwardian upbringing. It was a beautiful, romantic way of growing up, until the family lost its money. And I decided to be bad and rough and find the streets rather than the gates.
I do not like to work with patients who are in love. Perhaps it is because of envy – I, too, crave enchantment. Perhaps it is because love and psychotherapy are fundamentally incompatible. The good therapist fights darkness and seeks illumination, while romantic love is sustained by mystery and crumbles upon inspection.
The connection to place, to the land, the wind, the sun, stars, the moon… it sounds romantic, but it’s true – the visceral experience of motion, of moving through time on some amazing machine – a few cars touch on it, but not too many compared to motorcycles. I always felt that any motorcycle journey was special.
‘Little Night’ has layers of meaning. There’s something enchanted about night. All those heavenly bodies, shooting stars, the crescent moon, celestial phenomenon. Owls fly at night, and first kisses happen. Night is romantic. Alternately, darkness hides the worst of human behavior.
I think it’s important to have closure in any relationship that ends – from a romantic relationship to a friendship. You should always have a sense of clarity at the end and know why it began and why it ended. You need that in your life to move cleanly into your next phase.
When most people set out to change their lives, they often focus on all the external stuff, like a new job or a new location or new friends or a new romantic prospects and on and on. The reality is that changing your life starts with changing the way you see everything in your life.
I think that the romantic impulse is in all of us and that sometimes we live it for a short time, but it’s not part of a sensible way of living. It’s a heroic path and it generally ends dangerously. I treasure it in the sense that I believe it’s a path of great courage. It can also be the path of the foolhardy and the compulsive.
We don’t tend to write about disease in fiction – not just teen novels but all American novels – because it doesn’t fit in with our idea of the heroic romantic epic. There is room only for sacrifice, heroism, war, politics and family struggle.
I like all types of women. I accept them as they are when they come into my life… But I’m not a romantic. I’m just up-front. I like to be a part of something real, not make-believe. I tell women to tell me the truth, to just lay it out. Let me be the judge and decide if I want you around or not. Let me have my choice.
Especially around Valentine’s Day, it’s easy to find advice about sustaining a successful marriage, with suggestions for ‘date nights’ and romantic dinners for two. But as we spend more and more of our lives outside marriage, it’s equally important to cultivate the skills of successful singlehood.
I do feel like guys feel pressure to be funny with me, which is kind of annoying. It’s a turn-off if someone’s trying hard to be funny because it feels like they’re auditioning for a comedy job or something. It doesn’t feel romantic to me. I get so much comedy from my life that, from a guy, I’m more looking for something sweet or romantic.
I think I meant that, given the circumstances of my childhood, I had the illusion that it’s easier to be alone. To have your relationships be casual and also to pose as a solitary person, because it was more romantic. You know, I was raised on the idea of the ramblin’ man and the loner.
