Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton had an epic love that not even Brad and Angelina, as Vanity Fair points out, have a chance of standing up to.
In a new book called “Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the Marriage of the Century,” written by Vanity Fair contributing editor Sam Kashner and co-author Nancy Schoenberger, Burton’s adoration for Taylor is laid bare for the world to read, according to a VF press release.
The July issue of Vanity Fair - on sale in New York and L.A. on June 2, and nationally on June 8 - will include a variety of snippets from Burton's letters, but we also have a few excerpts below, courtesy of VF:
Burton on the idiocy of love:
“One of these days I will wake up—which I think I have done already—and realize to myself that I really do love. I find it very difficult to allow my whole life to rest on the existence of another creature. I find it equally difficult, because of my innate arrogance, to believe in the idea of love. There is no such thing, I say to myself. There is lust, of course, and usage, and jealousy, and desire and spent powers, but no such thing as the idiocy of love. Who invented that concept? I have wracked my shabby brains and can find no answer.”
Burton calls acting “faintly ridiculous”:
“I have never quite got over the fact that I thought and I’m afraid I still do think, that ‘acting’ for a man—a really proper man—is sissified and faintly ridiculous. I will do this film with Ponti and Loren out of sheer cupidity—desire for money. I will unquestionably do many more. But my heart, unlike yours, is not in it.”
Burton on the misunderstanding between them:
“You must know, of course, how much I love you. You must know, of course, how badly I treat you. But the fundamental and most vicious, swinish, murderous, and unchangeable fact is that we totally misunderstand each other … we operate on alien wavelengths. You are as distant as Venus—planet, I mean—and I am tone-deaf to the music of the spheres. But how-so-be-it nevertheless. (A cliché among Welsh politicians.) I love you and I always will. Come back to me as soon as you can … ”
Burton on how he’ll never write about another relationship:
“I’ll leave it to you to announce the parting of the ways while I shall never say or write one word except this valedictory note to you. Try and look after yourself. Much love.”