The End of the Affair (outfit post and reading recommendation)

Hello, there! In this post, I will do more than show you what I wore. I'll recommend a movie and a book to you. The End of the Affair is a novel by Graham Greene. I watched the movie and read the book for a class at the University- and I was very grateful to my teacher for the discovery of both. 

Do you wear summer hats? Most of the time I do. I figured out that this way I feel a lot more cool...and I mean that in the literal sense of the word, in the sense of "not feeling overheated." Besides, isn't there something romantic about hats? Especially the lady- like hats? Speaking of which- Have you seen the film  " The End of the Affair"? If you haven't, you might want to do it. I LOVED IT. It's really, such a beautiful love story.

A HAUNTING QUOTE THAT DESCRIBES WHEN THE PROTAGONIST REALIZES THEIR LOVE WAS DOOMED 

“I became aware that our love was doomed; love had turned into a love affair with a beginning and an end. I could name the very moment when it had begun, and one day I knew I should be able to name the final hour. When she left the house I couldn't settle to work. I would reconstruct what we had said to each other; I would fan myself into anger or remorse. And all the time I knew I was forcing the pace. I was pushing, pushing the only thing I loved out of my life. As long as I could make believe that love lasted I was happy; I think I was even good to live with, and so love did last. But if love had to die, I wanted it to die quickly. It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death; I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck.”

The End of the Affair

A QUOTE ABOUT LOVE AND AFRICA

“I have loved no part of the world like this and I have loved no women as I love you. You're my human Africa. I love your smell as I love these smells. I love your dark bush as I love the bush here, you change with the light as this place does, so that one all the time is loving something different and yet the same. I want to spill myself out into you as I want to die here.”

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A QUOTE THAT DESCRIBES HOW LOVE CAN FEEL LIKE TORTURE

“Sometimes I get tired of trying to convince him that I love him and shall love him for ever. He pounces on my words like a barrister and twists them. I know he is afraid of that desert which would be around him if our love were to end, but he can’t realize that I feel exactly the same. What he says aloud, I say to myself silently and write it here.”

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A COMMENT ON SUPERFICIALITY OF WANTING TO BE ADMIRED

“I want men to admire me, but that's a trick you learn at school--a movement of the eyes, a tone of voice, a touch of the hand on the shoulder or the head. If they think you admire them, they will admire you because of your good taste, and when they admire you, you have an illusion for a moment that there's something to admire.”

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A QUOTE THAT SHOWS A PRAYER- SHE PRAYS TO GOD QUITE OFTEN 

“I’m not at peace anymore. I just want him like I used to in the old days. I want to be eating sandwiches with him. I want to be drinking with him in a bar. I’m tired and I don’t want anymore pain. I want Maurice. I want ordinary corrupt human love. Dear God, you know I want to want Your pain, but I don’t want it now. Take it away for a while and give it me another time.”

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A QUOTE ABOUT BITTERNESS AND WRITING

“And there, in that phrase, the bitterness leaks again out of my pen. What a dull lifeless quality this bitterness is. If I could I would write with love, but if I could write with love I would be another man; I would never have lost love.”

The End of the Affair

MORE QUOTES ABOUT LOVE FROM THE END OF THE AFFAIR

“We can love with our minds, but can we love only with our minds? Love extends itself all the time, so that we can love even with our senseless nails: we love even with our clothes, so that a sleeve can feel a sleeve.”

.....

“How strange too and unfamiliar to think that one had been loved, that one's presence had once had the power to make a difference between happiness and dullness in another's day.”

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“Insecurity is the worst sense that lovers feel: sometimes the most humdrum desireless marriage seems better. Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust.”

The End of the Affair

 The book is also amazing but I'll get back to that later...if you had watched the film, do you by any chance remember all  those gorgeous hats? Julianne Moore's wardrobe in that film...just a dream. It is what vintage means for me...pure magic. Once I saw a documentary about WW2 and I couldn't believe how glamorous all those ladies in that period were... I mean I have seen it in movies, but only when I had seen the documentary had I realized that your average women was also looking that polished and groomed...All those elaborate hairdo's and dresses...and there was the war going on! How did they have time to curl their hair?

Sometimes I think we're getting lazy...I mean we want to be comfortable all the time...and we forget how dressing up can be fun. Well, my outfit isn't exactly glamorous but it is some kind of alternative. I may not be all dressed up but I'm getting there. Does it ever happens to you that people ask you for what occasion are you dressing for... like wearing a dress is something you should do only in formal situations? I mean  why should we be wearing jeans all the time? A nice dress, heels and a hat- and I do feel comfortable (why shouldn't I) and hopefully I also don't look that bad.

However, I did say that I will get back to the book... Such an amazing book and really Greene is a great writer. He does have a way with words...Yes, I just have to get back to this novel....and I have to be a thief and steal these words, as I often think of them:



“The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belongs to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.” 
 Graham Greene, The End of the Affair

Happiness makes us lose our identity...and at the same time it makes us more us...sounds a bit like a paradox? Sometimes I think that the life itself is but a paradox...but here is another quote for that little helpless romantic that is to be found in all of us....

“Suddenly I realized she was asleep. Exhausted by her flight she had fallen asleep against my shoulder as so many times, in taxis, in buses, on a park-seat. I sat still and let her be. There was nothing to disturb her in the dark church. The candles napped around the virgin, and there was nobody else there. The slowly growing pain in my upper arm where her weight lay was the greatest pleasure I had ever known.”