The Only Story

“Would you rather love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.”

LoveSuffering

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“Everyone has their love story. Everyone. It may have been a fiasco, it may have fizzled out, it may never even have got going, it may have been all in the mind, that doesn't make it any less real. Sometimes, it makes it more real. Sometimes, you see a couple, and they seem bored witless with one another, and you can't imagine them having anything in common, or why they're still living together. But it's not just habit or complacency or convention or anything like that. It's because once, they had their love story. Everyone does. It's the only story.”

LoveRelationshipsTrue LoveMeaningfulLove StoryUnrequited LoveCouplesValidationJulian BarnesThe Only Story

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“From love's absolutism to love's absolution? No: I don't believe in the cosy narratives of life some find necessary, just as I choke on comforting words like redemption and closure. Death is the only closure I believe in; and the wound will stay open until that final shutting of the doors. As for redemption, it's far too neat, a movie-maker's bromide; and beyond that, it feels like something grand, which human beings are too imperfect to deserve, much less bestow upon themselves.”

LoveDeathSadRedemptionRealismClosurePlatitudesClichésJulian BarnesThe Only Story

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“he certainly never regretted his love for Susan. What he did regret was that he had been too young, too ignorant, too absolutist, too confident of what he imagined love’s nature and workings to be.”

LoveRegret

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“The government had been talking about sexually transmitted disease. But it was the same with words: they too could be sexually transmitted.”

LoveSex

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“And even when he guessed that the love stories of the misled and the forsaken had become a little less authentic with each retelling . . . even if this was the case, he was still moved. Indeed, he was more moved by the lives of the bereft and the unchosen than he was by stories of success in love.”

LoveAuthenticityUnrequited LoveForsakenLove StoriesJulian BarnesThe Only StoryUnlucky In Love

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“Marriage is a jewellery box which, by some mysterious opposite of alchemy, turns gold, silver and diamonds back into base metal, paste and quartz.”

LoveRelationshipsMarriageDisappointmentCynicism

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