You live by what you thrill to

“You live by what you thrill to” is a 1928 statement by D. H. Lawrence to Aldous Huxley, presented at the opening of the introduction to Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It serves as a concise point of entry into the novel’s concern with what makes life feel vital, and with the difference between genuine tenderness and the forms of love or desire Lawrence distrusted.

Wording and Attribution

The sentence appears as an epigraph attributed to D. H. Lawrence in 1928 and addressed to Aldous Huxley. Its compact phrasing makes “thrill” the test of what sustains a life: the emphasis falls not on an abstract rule but on the experience that truly moves a person. The introduction places the statement before its account of Lawrence’s literary aims, so it frames the discussion rather than functioning as dialogue or as an episode in the novel’s plot.

Place in the Introduction

The introduction sets the phrase beside Lawrence’s call for men and women to reclaim their bodies, then explains why the novel’s early working title was “Tenderness.” That context complicates any reading of “thrill” as a simple endorsement of sexual excitement. Lawrence is described as hostile to casual sex and promiscuity, while also rejecting what he called modern romantic love; the introduction instead presents the novel as seeking a different kind of love, grounded in real tenderness.

Interpretive Significance

As a framing statement, the expression links vitality to what genuinely stirs a person while leaving the nature of that experience open. The introduction supplies its particular literary context: in Lawrence’s last novel, forbidden sexual love heals the characters rather than destroying them. The phrase therefore resonates with the introduction’s account of the book’s challenge to familiar cultural and literary expectations, without reducing that challenge to sensation alone.