Love Quote by Nora Roberts

Roberts slips a scalpel under the genre’s prettiest illusion: fiction doesn’t just flatter love, it upgrades the people who do it. Her “aren’t most” is a friendly shrug that doubles as an indictment. Of course romance heroes are superior to real men. They’re engineered to be. They listen at the exact right moment, commit at the exact right tempo, and carry just enough damage to seem human without ever becoming exhausting. The line’s wit is in its plainness; she refuses to pretend the fantasy isn’t a fantasy.

The subtext is less about dunking on reality than defending the bargain romance makes with its readers. These books aren’t documentaries about dating; they’re controlled environments where emotional labor is visible, reciprocated, and rewarded. By extending the point to “heroes in fiction of any kind,” Roberts broadens the critique beyond bodice-rippers into the whole narrative economy: protagonists are optimized for significance. Real people are messy, inconsistent, and often boring in the ways life requires; characters can be distilled into meaning.

Her add-on - “Same goes for heroines and real women” - is the quiet pressure point. Romance has long been accused of selling impossible men; Roberts reminds us it also sells impossible women, often in more socially punishing ways. The context is a writer who helped mainstream contemporary romance, speaking from inside the machine. She’s not apologizing for the upgrade. She’s naming it so readers can want it without confusing it for a job description.