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Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life... You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' or 'how very perceptive' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.

Neil Gaiman#6

EmotionsLoveSufferingVulnerability

About this quote

What does it mean?
Love makes you vulnerable and can hurt deeply.
In plain terms
Love opens you up and hurts when lost.
What can you take from it?
Love risks deep emotional pain.

Where it applies

  • romantic relationships
  • healing
  • self-protection

Putting it to work

  • accept vulnerability
  • prepare for heartbreak

Questions to consider

  • Is love worth the hurt?
  • How do you protect yourself?

Another view

It presents love mostly as suffering.

More from Neil Gaiman

  1. Life - and I don't suppose I'm the first to make this comparison - is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.

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  2. Whatever happened to me in my life, happened to me as a writer of plays. I'd fall in love, or fall in lust. And at the height of my passion, I would think, 'So…

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  3. It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor…

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