Quote of the Day: Judith Viorst on Life & Wisdom

In the late 1960s, as the sexual revolution rewired dating scripts and “liberation” became both headline and household argument, American culture started admitting what it had long implied: attraction isn’t just private; it’s a social force. That old upheaval still feels urgent in 2026, when we’re fluent in labels, “situationships,” and algorithmic compatibility, yet oddly hesitant to name the charge that separates comfort from commitment. “Love is the same as like except you feel sexier.”

The line works because it refuses to romanticize love into a mystical category. It drags love back to earth: the best lovers are people you actually enjoy. Not grand gestures, small pleasures: the shared joke, the long errand made easier, the silence that doesn’t need filling. Love, in this view, isn’t a different species from liking; it’s liking with voltage.

And that voltage, “sexier”, isn’t just skin-deep. It’s the sudden awareness of being seen, chosen, and desired. The beloved becomes a kind of mirror that improves the lighting: you stand a little straighter, laugh a little louder, take a few more risks. That’s why love can be thrilling and dangerous at once: it boosts confidence while raising the stakes. It’s also a useful diagnostic. If romance strips you of self-respect or makes you feel smaller, it may be infatuation or control, not love.

Judith Viorst has spent a career translating big feelings into crisp, funny truths, across children’s books, poems, and memoirs that treat inner life as both serious and survivable. Her wit is a scalpel: it cuts through sentimentality without cutting out tenderness.

If your January is about resolutions, let this be a practical one: choose relationships where liking is real, and where desire makes you more yourself, not less. A little humor helps, too, because the healthiest love can handle the joke.