Quotes from Women in Love

“But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“I should feel the air move against me, and feel the things I touched, instead of having only to look at them. I'm sure life is all wrong because it has become much too visual - we can neither hear nor feel nor understand, we can only see. I'm sure that is entirely wrong.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“Instead of chopping yourself down to fit the world, chop the world down to fit yourself. ”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“Every true artist is the salvation of every other. Only artists produce for each other a world that is fit to live in.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“I want us to be together without bothering about ourselves- to be really together because we ARE together, as if it were a phenomenon, not a thing we have to maintain by our own effort.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“And all the time she felt the reflection of his hopelessness in her. She couldn't quite, quite love in hoplessness. And he, being hopeless, couldn't ever love at all.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“Don't you find it a beautiful clean thought, a world empty of people, just uninterrupted grass, and a hare sitting up?”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“That’s the place to get to—nowhere. One wants to wander away from the world’s somewheres, into our own nowhere.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“And woman is the same as horses: two wills act in opposition inside her. With one will she wants to subject herself utterly. With the other she wants to bolt, and pitch her rider to perdition.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“She could just distinguish his features, as he slept the perfect sleep. In this darkness, she seemed to see him so distinctly. But he was far off, in another world. Ah, she could shriek with torment, he was so far off, and perfected, in another world. She seemed to look at him as at a pebble far away under clear dark water. And here was she, left with all the anguish of consciousness, whilst he was sunk deep into the other element of mindless, remote, living shadow-gleam. He was beautiful, far-off, and perfected. They would never be together. Ah, this awful, inhuman distance which would always be interposed between her and the other being! There was nothing to do but to lie still and endure. She felt an overwhelming tenderness for him, and a dark, under-stirring of jealous hatred, that he should lie so perfect and immune, in an other-world, whilst she was tormented with violent wakefulness, cast out in the outer darkness.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“What one does in one's art, that is the breath of one's being. What one does in one's life, that is a bagatelle for the outsiders to fuss about.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“When we really want to go for something better, we shall smash the old. Until then, any sort of proposal, or making proposals, is no more than a tiresome game for self-important people.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“They stood together in a false intimacy, a nervous contact. And he was in love with her.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“And besides, look at elder flowers and bluebells-they are a sign that pure creation takes place - even the butterfly.
But humanity never gets beyond the caterpillar stage -it rots in the chrysalis, it never will have wings.It is anti-creation, like monkeys and baboons.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“She thought she loved, she thought she was full of love.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“She lived a good deal by herself, to herself, working, passing on from day to day, and always thinking, trying to lay hold on life, to grasp it in her own understanding. Her active living was suspended, but underneath, in the darkness, something was coming to pass. If only she could break through the last integuments!”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“For to desire is better than to possess, the finality of the end was dreaded as deeply as it was desired.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“Now go away then, and leave me alone. I don't want any more of your meretricious persiflage.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“Man is a mistake. He must go.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“A dozen or more boats on the lake swung their rosy and moon–like lanterns low on the water, that reflected as from a fire. In the distance, the steamer twanged and thrummed and washed with her faintly–splashing paddles, trailing her strings of coloured lights, and occasionally lighting up the whole scene luridly with an effusion of fireworks, Roman candles and sheafs of stars and other simple effects, illuminating the surface of the water, and showing the boats creeping round, low down. Then the lovely darkness fell again, the lanterns and the little threaded lights glimmered softly, there was a muffled knocking of oars and a waving of music.

Gudrun paddled almost imperceptibly. Gerald could see, not far ahead, the rich blue and the rose globes of Ursula’s lanterns swaying softly cheek to cheek as Birkin rowed, and iridescent, evanescent gleams chasing in the wake. He was aware, too, of his own delicately coloured lights casting their softness behind him.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“But mankind is a dead tree, covered with fine brilliant galls of people.[..]And if it is so, why is it? she asked, hostile.They were rousing each other to a fine passion of opposition.
Why, why are people all balls of bitter dust?Because they won't fall off the tree when they're ripe.They hang on to their old positions when the position is over-past, till they become infested with little worms and dry-rot.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“She was not herself--she was not anything. She was something that is going to be--soon--soon--very soon. But as yet, she was only imminent.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“If there is no love, what is there?" she cried, almost jeering.

"There is," he said, in a voice of pure abstraction, "a final me which is stark and impersonal and beyond responsibility. So there is a final you. And it is there I would want to meet you-not in the emotional loving plane-but there beyond, where there is no speech and no terms of agreement. There we are two stark, unknown beings, two utterly strange creatures, I would want to approach you, and you me. And there could be no obligation, because there is no standard for action there, because no understanding has been reaped from that plane. It is quite inhuman-so there can be no calling to book, in any form whatsoever-because one is outside the pale of all that is accepted, and nothing known applies. On can only follow the impulse, taking that which lies in front, and responsible for nothing, asked for nothing, giving nothing, only each taking according to the primal desire.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“Have I interrupted a conversation?' she asked.
'No, only a complete silence,' said Birkin.
'Oh,' said Ursula, vaguely, absent.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“They looked at each other and laughed, then looked away, filled with darkness and secrecy. Then they kissed and remembered the magnificence of the night. It was so magnificent, such an inheritance of a universe of dark reality, that they were afraid to seem to remember. They hid away the remembrance and the knowledge.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“This was very bitter to Gerald, who had never known what boredom was, who had gone from activity to activity, never at a loss. Now, gradually, everything seemed to be stopping in him. He did not want any more to do the things that offered. Something dead within him just refused to respond to any suggestion. He cast over in his mind, what it would be possible to do, to save himself from this misery of nothingness, relieve the stress of this hollowness. And there were only three things left, that would rouse him, make him live. One was to drink or smoke hashish, the other was to be soothed by Birkin, and the third was women. And there was no-one for the moment to drink with. Nor was there a woman. And he knew Birkin was out. So there was nothing to do but to bear the stress of his own emptiness.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“It is all possessions, possessions, bullying you and turning you into a generalisation. You must leave your surroundings sketchy, unfinished, so that you are never contained, never confined, never dominated from the outside.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“I want to be gone out of myself, and you to be lost to yourself, so we are found different.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“Birkin came with Hermione. She had a rapt, triumphant look, like the fallen angels restored, yet still subtly demoniacal, now she held Birkin by the arm. And he was expressionless, neutralised, possessed by her as if it were his fate, without question.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

“If you admit a unison, you forfeit all the possibilities of chaos...Love is a direction which excludes all other directions. It is a freedom together, if you like.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from Women in Love

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Popular quotes

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“Kristin comes down the stairs, and the pressure on my chest snaps. I take a moment to turn away, inhaling deeply, blinking away tears. She sets the plate on a table behind the couch, and half tiptoes back up the stairs.

Thank god. I don’t think I could have handled maternal attention right this second. My body feels like it’s on a hair trigger.

I need to get it together. This is why people avoid me. Someone asks if I want a drink and I have a panic attack.

“You’re okay.” Declan is beside me, and his voice is low and soft, the way it was in the foyer. He’s so hard all the time, and that softness takes me by surprise. I blink up at him.

“You’re okay,” he says again.

I like that, how he’s so sure. Not Are you okay? No question about it.

You’re okay.

He lifts one shoulder in a half shrug. “But if you’re going to lose it, this is a pretty safe place to fall apart.” He takes two cookies from the plate, then holds one out to me. “Here. Eat your feelings.”

I’m about to turn him down, but then I look at the cookie. I was expecting something basic, like sugar or chocolate chip. This looks like a miniature pie, and sugar glistens across the top. “What . . . is that?”

“Pecan pie cookies,” says Rev. He’s taken about five of them, and I think he might have shoved two in his mouth at once. “I could live on them for days.”

I take the one Declan offered and nibble a bit from the side. It is awesome.

I peer up at him sideways. “How did you know?”

He hesitates, but he doesn’t ask me what I mean. “I know the signs.”

“I’m going to get some sodas,” Rev says slowly, deliberately. “I’m going to bring you one. Blink once if that’s okay.”

I smile, but it feels watery around the edges. He’s teasing me, but it’s gentle teasing. Friendly. I blink once.

This is okay. I’m okay. Declan was right.

“Take it out on the punching bag,” calls Rev. “That’s what I do.”

My eyes go wide. “Really?”

“Do whatever you want,” says Declan. “As soon as we do anything meaningful, the baby will wake up.”

Rev returns with three sodas. “We’re doing something meaningful right now.”

“We are?” I say.

He meets my eyes. “Every moment is meaningful.”

The words could be cheesy—should be cheesy, in fact—but he says them with enough weight that I know he means them. I think of The Dark and all our talk of paths and loss and guilt.

Declan sighs and pops the cap on his soda. “This is where Rev starts to freak people out.”

“No,” I say, feeling like this afternoon could not be more surreal. Something about Rev’s statement steals some of my earlier guilt, to think that being here could carry as much weight as paying respects to my mother. I wish I knew how to tell whether this is a path I’m supposed to be on. “No, I like it. Can I really punch the bag?”

Rev shrugs and takes a sip of his soda. “It’s either that or we can break out the Play-Doh”
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