"Love is the reason you were born"
About this Quote
“Love is the reason you were born” hits with the clean, declarative force of a lyric that wants to be remembered after the music fades. Dorothy Fields knew how to make big feelings feel inevitable. The line works because it’s not asking you to debate metaphysics; it’s giving you a plot. In one sentence, birth stops being biology and becomes destiny, turning the listener into the protagonist of a romantic (or at least tender) narrative.
Fields’ profession matters here. As a songwriter in the Great American Songbook orbit, she specialized in emotional efficiency: sentiments that land fast, scan well, and invite repetition. This is the kind of line built for a refrain, where meaning deepens through looping. Its simplicity is the trick. “The reason” implies singularity, a life organized around one central motive. That’s rhetorically intoxicating, especially in a culture that often frames existence as résumé-building or survival.
The subtext is both comforting and demanding. Comforting because it grants purpose without prerequisites: you don’t have to achieve anything to deserve meaning. Demanding because it quietly raises the stakes of daily life. If love is the reason, then lovelessness isn’t just sadness; it’s a kind of failure to fulfill the mission.
In Fields’ era - shadowed by depression, war, and social constraint - popular music functioned as public therapy. This line offers an elegant counter-program to despair: not denial, but re-centering. It’s a secular benediction dressed as a pop truth, optimistic enough to sing, blunt enough to believe on a bad day.
Fields’ profession matters here. As a songwriter in the Great American Songbook orbit, she specialized in emotional efficiency: sentiments that land fast, scan well, and invite repetition. This is the kind of line built for a refrain, where meaning deepens through looping. Its simplicity is the trick. “The reason” implies singularity, a life organized around one central motive. That’s rhetorically intoxicating, especially in a culture that often frames existence as résumé-building or survival.
The subtext is both comforting and demanding. Comforting because it grants purpose without prerequisites: you don’t have to achieve anything to deserve meaning. Demanding because it quietly raises the stakes of daily life. If love is the reason, then lovelessness isn’t just sadness; it’s a kind of failure to fulfill the mission.
In Fields’ era - shadowed by depression, war, and social constraint - popular music functioned as public therapy. This line offers an elegant counter-program to despair: not denial, but re-centering. It’s a secular benediction dressed as a pop truth, optimistic enough to sing, blunt enough to believe on a bad day.
Quote Details
| Topic | Love |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Fields, Dorothy. (2026, January 17). Love is the reason you were born. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/love-is-the-reason-you-were-born-66966/
Chicago Style
Fields, Dorothy. "Love is the reason you were born." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/love-is-the-reason-you-were-born-66966/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Love is the reason you were born." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/love-is-the-reason-you-were-born-66966/. Accessed 4 Feb. 2026.
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