Love Quote by Shana Alexander

A crush, Shana Alexander suggests, is less a conclusion than a collision: emotion arrives first, logic hustles in later to tidy up the scene. The line works because it refuses the flattering story we tell about ourselves - that we choose, evaluate, and then feel. Instead, she frames desire as a kind of narrative laundering. We "grope for reasons" not because they generated the feeling, but because we need an alibi for it.

Alexander's journalist instinct shows in the phrasing. "Mark" makes the observation sound almost forensic, like a telltale sign a reporter would clock in a public figure's carefully managed persona. "True crush" is a sly category: not mature love, not a considered partnership, but that volatile infatuation that thrives on projection. The word "grope" does double duty, hinting at the clumsiness of rationalization and the bodily, half-embarrassing nature of attraction. It's a little wicked, a little compassionate.

Context matters: Alexander wrote in an era when public conversation about romance was being rewritten by second-wave feminism, media celebrity, and a growing frankness about private life. Her point cuts through both prim moralism and self-help earnestness. It also anticipates today's algorithmic dating culture, where people list "reasons" like bullet points and call it chemistry. Alexander punctures that spreadsheet approach: the reasons are often post hoc - a story we build to make an irrational spark sound respectable, or at least intelligible to friends, family, and ourselves.