"To fall in love is awfully simple, but to fall out of love is simply awful"
About this Quote
Love, Myerson suggests, is an open door with a sticky lock: easy to walk through, hard to back out of. The line works because it’s built like a magic trick. The same words get rearranged - “awfully simple” and “simply awful” - and suddenly romance flips from breezy inevitability to claustrophobic endurance. It’s not just a clever palindrome-adjacent turn; it’s a diagnosis of how emotions trap us in their own logic.
As a model and public figure, Myerson’s authority here isn’t academic; it’s social and experiential. She’s speaking from a world where attraction can be instantaneous, public, and rewarded - a flashbulb event. Falling in love is framed as frictionless: chemistry, glamour, momentum. Falling out of love, by contrast, isn’t granted the same narrative support. There’s no cultural script for clean exits, only for loyalty, drama, or collapse. That’s the subtext: we romanticize beginnings and moralize endings, so disenchantment feels like failure rather than change.
The quote’s bite comes from its refusal to sentimentalize. It doesn’t pretend heartbreak is poetic; it’s “awful” in the plainest sense - awkward conversations, shared routines turning sour, the guilt of being the person who leaves. By making the language itself pivot, Myerson mirrors the experience: one small internal shift, and everything that once felt simple becomes unbearable.
As a model and public figure, Myerson’s authority here isn’t academic; it’s social and experiential. She’s speaking from a world where attraction can be instantaneous, public, and rewarded - a flashbulb event. Falling in love is framed as frictionless: chemistry, glamour, momentum. Falling out of love, by contrast, isn’t granted the same narrative support. There’s no cultural script for clean exits, only for loyalty, drama, or collapse. That’s the subtext: we romanticize beginnings and moralize endings, so disenchantment feels like failure rather than change.
The quote’s bite comes from its refusal to sentimentalize. It doesn’t pretend heartbreak is poetic; it’s “awful” in the plainest sense - awkward conversations, shared routines turning sour, the guilt of being the person who leaves. By making the language itself pivot, Myerson mirrors the experience: one small internal shift, and everything that once felt simple becomes unbearable.
Quote Details
| Topic | Heartbreak |
|---|---|
| Source | Bess Myerson — quotation attributed on Wikiquote: "To fall in love is awfully simple, but to fall out of love is simply awful" (see Bess Myerson page). |
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