Emotional Specificity Quotes

Hate generalizes; love specifies. Or: The movements of hatred are toward generalization; love's movements are toward specification.

I mean there are so many different colors of life, of feeling, of articulation... so when I meet someone who's an 8-color type... I'm like, 'Hey girl, magenta!' and she's like, 'Oh, you mean purple!' and she goes off on her purple thing, and I'm like, 'No - I want magenta!'

Hatred isgeneralized, but love is for the particular.

Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalization. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.

Hate generalizes; love is particular.

Abstract anger is great for rhetorical carrying on. You can go on endlessly about the post office, but it doesn't mean you're mad at your mailman.

Envy is never general, but always very particular - at least envy of the kind one feels strongly.

The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to substitutes is one of life's major mysteries.

At any given time, no matter how deeply you are in love with one person, they're appealing to a very specific side of you.

Love is a general emotion. Marriage is exactingly specific.

Emotions, in my experience aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic traincar constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." ... I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life.