"Your words are my food, your breath my wine. You are everything to me"

Sarah Bernhardt’s phrase “Your words are my food, your breath my wine. You are everything to me” paints a vivid picture of love as an all-consuming force, essential to existence and sustenance. The metaphorical substitution of “words” as “food” suggests that communication from the beloved is not just meaningful, but life-giving. Just as food nourishes and sustains the body, so the words spoken by the loved one provide emotional nourishment for the speaker’s soul or spirit. Each word feeds her, implying that the relationship is as essential and sustaining as daily bread.

Transitioning to “your breath my wine,” Bernhardt deepens the intimacy. Wine here symbolizes more than a beverage; it has historically signified pleasure, celebration, and intoxication. Breath, intimate and close, evokes sensual proximity and the very act of living. To claim that a lover’s breath has the same effect as wine suggests being intoxicated or uplifted simply by their presence, by the very air they exhale. There is a sense of rapture, and of being elevated above the mundane through closeness to the beloved.

The final phrase, “You are everything to me,” is the culmination of these metaphors, revealing utter devotion. It confirms that every aspect of the loved one, voice, presence, even breath, combines to become the cornerstone of the speaker’s existence. The beloved is not just a part of the speaker’s world, but the very center and purpose of it.

Altogether, Bernhardt’s imagery portrays love not merely as an emotion, but as a necessity that feeds, intoxicates, and envelops. There is a sense of dependence, adoration, and deep emotional need that surpasses reason, indicating love as both a source of strength and vulnerability. The language suggests romantic idealism where the boundaries between self and beloved blur, making love the axis around which life revolves.