Skip to main content

Love Quote by Isabelle Adjani

"One can not love without opening oneself, and opening oneself, that's taking the risk of suffering. One does not have control"

About this Quote

Adjani frames love less as a feeling than as a wager: the moment you "open oneself", you forfeit the fantasy of safety. The line works because it refuses the modern self-help promise that vulnerability is a technique you can deploy and retract at will. Here, openness is not curated intimacy; it is exposure. And exposure, by definition, invites pain.

The quote’s subtext is control anxiety. “One does not have control” lands like a quiet scandal in a culture obsessed with optimizing outcomes: the right partner, the right boundaries, the right communication script. Adjani punctures that managerial approach. Love isn’t a system you can run efficiently; it’s an event that happens to you, with consequences you can’t fully predict or domesticate. The repetition of “one” also matters. It universalizes the admission without turning it into a platitude, as if she’s smuggling a private truth into a general rule to make it bearable.

Contextually, coming from an actress known for intense, psychologically charged roles, the sentiment reads as lived performance: the professional act of opening oneself on camera mirrors the personal risk she’s describing. It suggests an artist’s familiarity with how porous the self becomes when you commit to someone or something. The quote’s power is its unsentimental clarity: suffering isn’t a sign you loved wrong; it’s the price of entry. The only real choice is whether you can tolerate not being in charge.

Quote Details

TopicLove
SourceHelp us find the source
Cite

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Adjani, Isabelle. (2026, January 17). One can not love without opening oneself, and opening oneself, that's taking the risk of suffering. One does not have control. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-can-not-love-without-opening-oneself-and-79872/

Chicago Style
Adjani, Isabelle. "One can not love without opening oneself, and opening oneself, that's taking the risk of suffering. One does not have control." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-can-not-love-without-opening-oneself-and-79872/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"One can not love without opening oneself, and opening oneself, that's taking the risk of suffering. One does not have control." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-can-not-love-without-opening-oneself-and-79872/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Isabelle Add to List
Isabelle Adjani on Love and Vulnerability
Click to enlarge Portrait | Landscape

About the Author

Isabelle Adjani

Isabelle Adjani (born June 27, 1955) is a Actress from France.

29 more quotes available

View Profile

Similar Quotes