Flowers for Algernon Love Quotes

Charlie is one step beyond thinking girls have cooties, but he wants to be like the other boys. Love may be a battlefield, but little Charlie also sees it as a game to win.

Charlie isn't quite sure how to do this, but hey—he's going to give it a shot. Even though he kind of bungles it later on, it's cool that he has some natural human instincts about how to go about wooing a woman.

Ah, the great paradox of love. Charlie is beginning to realize that the possibility of rejection is what makes love so difficult to attain. Let's hope Alice is on the same page.

Charlie feels like he's always playing a game of emotional catch-up. He's not quite able to love fully yet, but he thinks it's something he should do as soon as possible.

Charlie's got a fairytale perception of love that gets debunked pretty quickly after the operation—courtly love is just not the status quo anymore. He sees women as being inherently dangerous to his fragile ego.

Wow—that was fast. Sure Charlie and Alice have known each other for a long time as student and teacher, but we hope he steps on those brakes and considers what a big deal it is to fall in love.

Well, looky there—it turns out being too smart can actually be a barrier to love. Poor Charlie is just figuring out that having an edge up on everyone else can make it awfully difficult to find common ground with his sweetheart.

Now that Charlie is playing Freud to himself, we get more of an idea of why he can't do the deed with Alice. Is old Charlie trying to protect himself from getting hurt? Is he trying to sabotage himself? Psychology is some pretty tricky stuff.

Oh boy, Charlie's finally got it all. It's hard to tell whether he's talking about physical or emotional love, but that seems like it's the point—he's figured love out just in time to lose it forever.