It's an indication of how cynical our society has become that any kind of love story with a sad theme is automatically ridiculed as sentimental junk.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Sentimentalism is the working off on yourself of feelings you haven't really got.
Being cynical isn't necessarily being negative or bitter. It's a person who is wary of mistaking love for something that it's not and getting their heart broken.
Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.
I think we sort of are all fans of love really, if you're not then you're too cynical aren't you?
Sentimentality - that's what we call the sentiment we don't share.
It's often been said that I'm an extremely depressing, cynical writer. I've never known what to make of that.
There's a lot of talk about the positive aspects of love. We as a society downplay the danger, the anxiety, and the disappointment. We romanticize romance.
I'm a little hesitant to make my characters sentimental or to risk having the work labeled sentimental. It's something that I resist as a reader, and I don't resist it in life. I'm not an unmoved person by any stretch, but I think I don't want, I guess, to indulge those kinds of things sometimes in fiction. I can't tell you why exactly.
Sentimentality works by our seeing only what we want to see.
For reasons I don't fully understand, tragic love has a certain appeal.