romance Quotes

“In Austen’s world there was no such thing as a fling. Every romance was intended to lead to marriage.”

“It’s also the most perfect romance in all of literature and nothing in my life can ever measure up, so I spend my life limping in its shadow.”

“Each time the men in your life disappoint, you let Mr. Darcy in a little bit more.”

“The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.”

“A woman who writes has power, and a woman with power is feared.”

“We never really talked much or even looked at each other, but it didn’t matter because we were looking at the same sky together, which is maybe even more intimate than eye contact anyway. I mean, anybody can look at you. It’s quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.”

“Individuals who want to believe that there is no fulfillment in love, that true love does not exist, cling to these assumptions because this despair is actually easier to face than the reality that love is a real fact of life but is absent from their lives.”

“Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. ”

“When we feel deeply drawn to someone, we cathect them; that is, we invest feelings or emotion in them. That process of investment wherein a loved one becomes important to us is called ‘cathexis’.”

“One of the best guides to how to be self-loving is to give ourselves the love we are often dreaming about receiving from others. There was a time when I felt lousy about my over-forty body, saw myself as too fat, too this, or too that. Yet I fantasized about finding a lover who would give me the gift of being loved as I am.”

“Abuse and neglect negate love. Care and affirmation, the opposite of abuse and humiliation, are the foundation of love. No one can rightfully claim to be loving when behaving abusively.”

“How different things might be if, rather than saying “I think I’m in love,” we were saying “I’ve connected with someone in a way that makes me think I’m on the way to knowing love.”

“Our hearts connect with lots of folks in a lifetime but most of us will go to our graves with no experience of true love.”

“When men and women punish each other for truth telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be loving we willingly hear the other’s truth, and most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love.”

“To return to love, to get the love we always wanted but never had, to have the love we want but are not prepared to give, we seek romantic relationships. We believe these relationships, more than any other, will rescue and redeem us. ”

“The practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control.”

“True love does have the power to redeem but only if we are ready for redemption. Love saves us only if we want to be saved.”

“The wounded child inside many males is a boy who, when he first spoke his truths, was silenced by paternal sadism, by a patriarchal world that did not want him to claim his true feelings. The wounded child inside many females is a girl who was taught from early childhood that she must become something other than herself, deny her true feelings, in order to attract and please others.”

“It is silly, isn’t it, that I would dream of someone else offering to me the acceptance and affirmation I was withholding from myself. This was a moment when the maxim “You can never love anybody if you are unable to love yourself” made clear sense. And I add, “Do not expect to receive the love from someone else you do not give yourself.”

“To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients - care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.”

“I his book Peck rightly emphasizes that most of us ‘confuse cathecting with loving.’ We all know how often individuals of cathecting insist that they love the other person even if they are hurting of neglecting them. Since their feeling is that of cathexis, they insist that what they feel is love.”

“When we understand love as the will to nurture our own and another’s spiritual growth, it becomes clear that we cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive.”

“If instead of saying ‘I am in love’ we say ‘I am loving’ or ‘I will love.’ Our patterns around romantic love are unlikely to change if we do not change our language.”

“I will love you if you cut your hair and I will love you if you cut the hair of others. I will love you if you abandon your baticeering, and I will love you if you retire from the theater to take up some other, less dangerous occupation.”

″ I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp... I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and all the secrets have gone gasping into the world.”

“I will love you until every fire is extinguished and rebuilt from the handsomest and most susceptible of woods. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close... I will love you until your face is fogged by distant memory.”

“I will love you no matter how many mistakes I make when trying to reduce fractions, and no matter how difficult it is to memorize the periodic table. I will love you no matter what your locker combination was, or how you decided to spend your time during study hall. ”

“Life never end when you are in it.”

“Others believe that the world can be decoded by reading a newspaper. In my case, the only thing that made sense of the world was you, and without you the world will seem as garbled and tragic as a malfunctioning typewrit9.”

“I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms.”

“‘You guys seemed, still seem, in love, truly, deeply.’ She sighed. ‘But seventeen is an inconvenient time to be in love.’”

“But there is one other important similarity between the schoolboy and ourselves. If he is an imaginative boy he will, quite probably, be reveling in the English poets and romancers suitable to his age some time before he begins to suspect that Greek grammar is going to lead him to more and more enjoyments of this same sort.”

“I took my morning walk, I took my evening walk, I ate something, I thought about something, I wrote, I napped and dreamt something too, and with all that something, I still have nothing because so much of sum’thing has always been and always will be you. I miss you.”

″ You’ll be sick or feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for the first time in your life. It won’t matter. Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you’ll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all. ”

“Love of love written by the broken hearted, love of life written by the dead.”

“The greatest of love letters are always coded for the one and not the many.”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever felt as happy as I did that day, but then again, it was always like that when we were together. I never wanted it to end.”

“I want to wake up with you beside me in the mornings. I want to spend my evenings looking at you across the dinner table. I want to share every mundane detail of my day with you and hear every detail of yours. I want to laugh with you and fall asleep with you in my arms.”

“I...have a woman in my arms who has suffered greatly and desperately needs to believe once again that she is beautiful.”

“The world will break your heart ten ways to Sunday, that’s guaranteed. And I can’t begin to explain that- or the craziness inside myself and everybody else, but guess what? Sunday is my fav day again”

“When she needed help most, she was abandoned—and only when she offered help to others was she beloved.”

“In my arms is a woman who has given me a Skywatcher’s Cloud Chart, a woman who knows all my secrets, a woman who knows just how messed up my mind is, how many pills I’m on, and yet she allows me to hold her anyway. ”

“Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.”

“I want the loved person to grow and unfold for his own sake, and in his own ways, and not for the purpose of serving me.”

“Love is often nothing but a favorable exchange between two people who get the most of what they can expect, considering their value on the personality market.”

“Selfish persons are incapable of loving others, but they are not capable of loving themselves either.”

“Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accordance with the root of the word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his individuality and uniqueness.”

“Immature love says: “I love you because I need you.” Mature love says: “I need you because I love you.”

“In love the paradox occurs that two beings become one and yet remain two.”

“I’ve been complimented on my appearance before. But never in his tone of voice. Of all the things he’s said, I don’t know why this catches me off guard. But it startles me so much that without thinking I blurt out, “I could say the same about you.” I pause. ‘In case you didn’t know.’ ”

“Day leans in toward me. He reaches up to touch my face. I can tell it still hurts him to use his fingers, and his nails are dark with dried blood. “You’re brilliant,” he says. “But you’re a fool to stay wish someone like me.” I close my eyes at the touch of his hand. “Then we’re both fools.”

“You’d rather make up a fantasy version of somebody in your head than be with a real person.”

“I’ve never gotten a love letter before. But reading these notes like this, one after the other, it feels like I have. It’s like...it’s like there’s only ever been Peter. Like everyone else that came before him, they were all to prepare me for this.”

“Peter Kavinsky just kissed me. He kissed me, and I liked it. I’m pretty sure I liked it. I’m pretty sure I like him.”

“But I don’t want him. I want someone else. It feels strange to have spent so much time wishing for something, for someone, and then one day, suddenly, to just stop.”

“Do you think there’s a difference? Between belonging with and belong to, I mean?”

“The boy looks at me. I would’ve expected his bright eyes to look dimmer in the night, but instead they seem to reflect the light coming from the windows above us. He’s amused. “Who said anything about you , sweetheart?”

“I smile, because it’s so cute. And for a second, just for a second, I forget. I forget that this isn’t real.”

“I want to say yes, but I don’t want to be with a boy whose heart belongs to somebody else. Just once, I want to be some one else’s first choice.”

“You only like guys you don’t have a shot with, because you’re scared. What are you so scared of?”

“I kiss him one more time and I feel like I’m flying.”

“Love is scary: it changes; it can go away. That’s part of the risk. I don’t want to be scared any more.”

“He took my hand and stared at it for the longest time. His own hand was soft and warm. Mine was sweating like crazy. He was saying, “Hm” and tracing the lines of my palm with his finger. It gave me the shivers, but not in an entirely unpleasant way. The sun was beating down on us, and I thought it might be nice to stay there forever with him just running his finger along my palm like that.”

“How can this be real?” I whispered. “I mean you... you... where you come from. Your world. It is so beyond everything I’ve ever known. And you would... you would take me to the Pumpkin Ball?”

“Love holds no grievances.”

“She wears strength and darkness equally well, the girl has always been half goddess, half hell.”

“Attempting the mastery of fear is useless. In fact, it asserts the power of fear by the very assumption that it need be mastered. The true resolution rests entirely on mastery through love.”

“So here I am walking around with another person inside of me. Though I think I put it better the day we parted when I said there is a third person we have created from the two of us. And I am stalked now by that other entity.”

“Some girls are full of heartache and poetry and those are the kind of girls who try to save wolves instead of running away from them.”

“Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.”

“Feelings of romantic love are, in the end, just some chemical reaction. Under the right conditions, they occur no matter who the other person is.”

“Like two solitary birds flying the great prairies by celestial reckoning, all of these years and lifetimes we have been moving toward one another.”

“You are damaged and broken and unhinged. But so are shooting stars and comets.”

“Your mind will keep you up at night, make you cry, destroy you over and over again. You need to convince your mind that it has to let go…because your heart already knows how to heal.”

“Some people are born with tornadoes in their lives, but constellations in their eyes. Other people are born with stars at their feet, but their souls are lost at sea.”

“There are songs that come free from the blue-eyed grass, from the dust of a thousand country roads. This is one of them.”

“But, I am, after all, a man. And all the philosophic rationalizations I can conjure up do not keep me from wanting you, every day, every moment, the merciless wail of time, of time I can never spend with you, deep within my head. I love you, profoundly and completely. And I always will. The last cowboy, Robert.”

“I hope you find someone who knows how to love you when you are sad.”

“Your heart will fix itself. It’s your mind you need to worry about. Your mind where you locked the memories, your mind where you have kept pieces of the ones that hurt you, that still cut through you like shards of glass. ”

“We often sneaked out at night to, for example, sing ‘American Pie’ beneath the window of the captain of the cheerleading team. (Her father was a local minister and so, we reasoned, less likely to shoot). After I was caught returning at dawn from one such late-night escapade, my worried mother thoroughly interrogated me regarding every drug teenagers take, never suspecting that the most intoxicating thing I’d experienced, by far, was the volume of romantic poetry she’d handed me the previous week.”

“Always be honest about the way someone makes you feel about yourself.”

“Some people will always taste like fire and leave the ones that love them tasting like ash.”

“A mess of beautiful contradictions make her whole, she wears fire for skin but a storm lives in her soul.”

“Thank you...for gracing my life with your lovely presence, for adding the sweet measure of your soul to my existence.”

“You are a dangerous collection of all my favorite things. An old soul, a heart of gold and hands that make my body sing.”

“Fall in love with someone who tastes like adventure but looks like the calm, beautiful morning after a terrible storm”

“Heaven would never be heaven without you.”

“Those freckles make you seem like a galaxy of stars, just waiting to be explored and loved.”

“Some people are going to love you like you are a pond, and others are going to love you like you are a river, but you are an ocean, and you should never settle for anyone who loves you for anything less than that.”

“You must understand: they fear you. There is nothing scarier in their minds than a girl who knows the power of her flames.”

“It is eerily terrifying that there is no sound when a heart breaks. Car accidents end with a bang, falling ends with a thud, even writing makes the scratching sound of pencil against paper. But the sound of a heart breaking is completely silent.”

“You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don’t waste your time on anything else.”

“You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.”

“Love..It can be romantic, platonic, familial, fleeting, everlasting, conditional, unconditional, imbued with sorrow, stoked by sex, sullied by abuse, amplified by kindness, twisted by betrayal, deepened by time, darkened by difficulty, leavened by generosity, nourished by humor and “loaded with promises and commitments” that we may or may not want or keep.

“I sometimes have the feeling you’ve been here a long time, more than one lifetime, and that you’ve dwelt in private places none of the rest of us has even dreamed about.”

“We have both lost ourselves and created something else, something that exists only as an interlacing of the two of us. ”

“It’s clear to me now that I have been moving toward you and you toward me for a long time. Though neither of us was aware of the other before we met, there was a kind of mindless certainty bumming blithely along beneath our ignorance that ensured we would come together.”

“The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don’t know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they’ve been listening to the sad songs longer than they’ve been living the unhappy lives.”

“A woman should be able to kiss a man beautifully and romantically without any desire to be either his wife or his mistress.”

“What delicious romance! His true reaction was neither fear nor sorrow--only this deep delight in being with her that colored the banality of his words and made the mawkish seem sad and the posturing seem wise. He would come back--eternally. He should have known!”

“I hoped she could see my smile in the light of my brain.”

“Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways...”

“I made it clear to the world that what Jade and I had found in each other was more real than any other world, more real than time, more real than death, more real, even, than she and I.”

“I wanted to tell you that the man who is your father, the man who gave you life, has found a woman who is in heaven when she’s in his arms.”

“I wanted to tell you that the man who is your father, the man who gave you life, has found a woman who is in heaven when she’s in his arms.”

“There is no orchestra, no audience; it is an empty theater in the middle of the night and all the clocks in the world are ticking. And now for this last time, Jade, I don’t mind, or even ask if it is madness: I see your face, I see you, you; I see you in every seat.”

“To compensate for the difficulties in their lives, people spend a lot of their time daydreaming, imagining a future full of adventure, success, and romance. If you can create the illusion that through you they can live out their dreams, you will have them at your mercy.”

“Her seductive power, however, did not lie in her looks...”

“Maybe I consistently hesitated to risk letting the thing we had together deteriorate into a romance.”

“Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it... that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.”

“It is the privilege of those who fear love to murder those who do not fear it!

“We are afraid to care too much, for fear that the other person does not care at all.”

“Those who love to be feared fear to be loved, and they themselves are more afraid than anyone, for whereas other men fear only them, they fear everyone.

“I’m not afraid to try again, I’m just afraid of getting hurt for the same reason.”

“What’s a romance without anger, tears, and woe?”

“Romance has killed more people than cancer. Okay, maybe not killed, but dulled more lives. Removed more hope, sold more medication, caused more tears.”

“It’s as if when you love someone, they become your reason.”

“For a day, just for one day, Talk about that which disturbs no one and bring some peace into your Beautiful eyes.”

“For I have learned that every heart will get What it prays for most.”

“So I will always lean my heart as close to your soul as I can.”

“In many parts of this world water is Scarce and precious. People sometimes have to walk A great distance Then carry heavy jugs upon their heads. Because of our wisdom, we will travel far for love.”

“I caught the happy virus last night When I was out singing beneath the stars. It is remarkably contagious - So kiss me.”

“Forgiveness is part of the treasure you need to craft your falcon wings and return To your true realm of divine freedom.”

“Here soar not with wings But with your moving hands and feet And sweating brows - Standing by your Beloved’s side Reaching out to comfort this world With your cup of solace Drawn from your vast reservoir of truth.”

My dear, Is it true that your mind is sometimes like a battering Ram Running all through the city, Shouting so madly inside and out About the ten thousand things That do not matter?”

“I have no use for divine patience - My lips are now burning and everywhere. I am running from every corner of this earth and sky Wanting to kiss you.”

“This sky Where we live Is no place to lose your wings So love, love Love.”

“We think you’ll find that every woman in her heart of hearts longs for three things: to be romanced, to play an irreplaceable role in a great adventure, and to unveil beauty. That’s what makes a woman come alive.”

“She’s moderately unpopular which makes a romance between us more likely.”

“We were strange in love her and I too wild to last too rare to die.”

“There’s too much risk in loving,’ the young boy said, ‘no,’ said the old man, ‘there’s too much risk in not.”

“I will follow you, my love, to the edge of all our days, to our very last tomorrows.”

“Sometimes I want a quiet life other times I want to go a little bit fucking Gatsby.”

“I let her go because I knew she could do better and now she’s gone I wonder if I should’ve just been better.”

“I aspire to be an old man with an old wife laughing at old jokes from a wild youth.”

“She was everything real in a world of make-believe. ”

“She wore the moonlight like lingerie. ”

“Love her but leave her wild ”

“Because if he wasn’t really, really careful, Lori Sullivan was just going to keep stealing his heart one sentence, one meal, one smile at time”

“From the moment I saw her I knew this one was worth the broken heart.”

“That was her magic— she could still see the sunset even on those darkest days.”

“I WANT TO BE WITH SOMEONE WHO DREAMS OF DOING EVERYTHING IN LIFE AND NOTHING ON RAINY SUNDAY AFTERNOONS.”

“I want you, Leah. I’ve always wanted you. But wanting isn’t enough. You have to fight for it too, and you’re not going to.”

“And not that I don’t love those words, but what were you wrong about?” “Walking away from you.” She stepped into him. “I’m done with that, by the way. I’m walking straight at you from now on.”

“I wanted to be able to tell you the exact moment I fell in love with you. But I can’t do that.”

“I wanted to be able to tell you the exact moment I fell in love with you. But I can’t do that.” “You can’t?” A pin could have dropped in the grass and it would have been heard in that moment as everyone grew perfectly silent to listen for his reply.”

“No, I can’t. Because every single moment I’ve spent with you is that moment, Lori.”

“He loved the way she put her entire self behind whatever she was doing, even if she had no idea what she was doing and was getting it all wrong. He loved the way she danced as if she was connected to the clouds and the sun and the rainbows.”

“Because he finally knew what it felt like to hold sunshine in his hands...and when Lori left, it was going to feel like winter all year round, even on the hottest days of summer.”

“I fell in love with you when you put Mo’s feelings before your own and stayed with her for as long as she needed you.” One fat tear slid down her cheek as he said, “And, most of all, I fell in love with you when you showed me that it was safe to love again. I keep falling in love with you again and again. Just like I’m falling right this second.”

“And it was why he loved her. One of the reasons, anyway. Because he also loved her bratty comebacks. ”

“Because he finally knew what it felt like to hold sunshine in his hands...and when Lori left, it was going to feel like winter all year round, even on the hottest days of summer.”

“And maybe, just maybe, as long as she never actually confessed to him how she felt, that would make it okay to give in to what she felt for Grayson for one night, beneath the moon, with the smell of wild grass and the ocean all around them...”

“And he loved that she’d stormed into his life and turned everything upside down before he ever had a chance to stop her.”

“God, the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life was giving up what he wanted so that the woman he loved could get what she needed.”

“I fell in love with you when you crashed into my fence post and chased after my chickens and fell down in the mud with the pigs. I fell in love with you when you taught everyone in town to line dance.”

“All he knew was that she was beautiful...and that, somehow, despite everything he’d done to try to stop it from happening, she’d managed to steal his heart one sassy smile at a time.”

“Maybe it was simply that falling in love wasn’t something Lori would ever be able to turn away from, regardless of just how much pain she knew would be coming down the pike. ”

“But you’re far from this. Your fingers turn the strangeness of these pages that somehow connect my life to yours. Your eyes are safe. The story is just another few hundred pages of your mind. For me, it’s here. It’s now. I have to go through with this, considering the cost at every turn.”

“Now he sits alone in his room, a sixteen-year-old boy, waiting for her to call. Wishing for her to tell him it was real. It was as perfect as he imagined. But the phone sits silently.”

Along the way, the book carefully traces their tumultuous relationship, from their first hopeful meeting, to the boy’s loneliness when his family was away and she never called, to her betrayal of him with a rival. It is revealing the innermost thoughts of a teenage boy at a vulnerable time in his life.

“He throws the pot of lemon balm she gave him over the edge of the balcony. No phone call. He tosses the black Frisbee and the Swiss Army knife over too. Still the phone stays silent.”

“The boy continues to wait, systematically destroying all of the objects from their short-lived relationship. He rips up the bus pass from their first meeting. The phone is quiet.”

“As he plays their relationship over in his mind like a movie, he wonders: What if his heart’s delight doesn’t call? Will life be worth living then? ”

Over the course of the novel, the youth methodically destroys each piece of memorabilia from his relationship with Ann-Katrin, whom he thinks of as Heart’s Delight (it is also another name for the lemon balm plant she grows in her bedroom).

“Against the sweeping backdrop of a world seared by war and plagued with uncertainty, Nesta and Cassian battle monsters from within.”

″ She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book.”

“I catch the rose petals as they fall from my cheeks, as they float around the frame of my body, as they cover me in something that feels like the absence of courage.”

“Adam pulls back just a tiny bit. Kisses my bottom lip. Bites it for just a second. His skin is 100 degrees hotter than it was a moment ago. ”

“Ostracized or incarcerated her whole life, seventeen-year-old Juliette is freed on the condition that she use her horrific abilities in support of The Reestablishment, a post-apocalyptic dictatorship.”

“It’s raining today. The sky is weeping for us. His lips are spelling secrets and my ears are spilling ink, staining my skin with his stories.”

“The sun is revolving around the moon when he responds. I offer him a smile. Try to keep my organs from falling out. Hope the holes in my head aren’t showing.”

″ And the key to halting them might very well rely on Cassian and Nesta facing their haunting pasts.”

“Horatio cannot refuse the lady, but as a happily married man, he finds himself tortured by Barbara’s tempting nature and astounding beauty.”

“To spend a night with you would be marvelous. Not for any physical pleasures. Do not get me wrong. Rather to hear your aspirations and goals. What makes you cringe? What makes you smile? I want to know what your childhood was like. What were your troubles? What are you r biggest fears? What do you dream about while you sleep? I want you to talk until the pattern of your voice vibrates my teeth and bones. I want to know every piece, every detail about you. I want your heart. I want the rhythm of my heart to align with the drumming of yours. I want you and I to not be you and I. I want you and I to be us.”

“Forever in a trance by your noncommittal romance.”

“I give myself three more seconds to look at him and it’s like another punch to the gut. He’s my person. He’s always been my person. My best friend, my confidant, probably the love of my life.”

“And girls do want boys who are interesting. Girls want the shy geeks who know everything and have big hands and good teeth and say sweet things.”

″... who has become her Loving Enemy, and at the end of Capitan Tempesta they are married.”

“Where was romance now, in the cold house of her great-aunt? Her eyes fell bitterly on the sensible underwear and the sombre skirt. The ball-dress had fallen off the chair out of sight, as if quenched by the stark uniform of everyday. It symbolized exactly Christina’s feelings.”

“That’s what seventeen-year-old Sky realizes after she meets Dean Holder. A guy with a reputation that rivals her own and an uncanny ability to invoke feelings in her she’s never had before.”

“I miss you deeply, unfathomably, senselessly, terribly.”

“We think you’ll find that every woman in her heart of hearts longs for three things: to be romanced, to play an irreplaceable role in a great adventure, and to unveil beauty. That’s what makes a woman come alive.”