You only love truly once in a lifetime

“You only love truly once in a lifetime” is the hatter’s belief that Julian’s love for Penelope is singular and lasting. Spoken while Julian hides in his old room and the hatter searches Barcelona for Penelope, the saying links the son’s lost love to the father’s own belated recognition of what he has lost.

The Saying and Its Context

The hatter tells Julian, “You only love truly once in a lifetime, Julian, even if you aren't always aware of it.” The words follow a conversation about the hatter’s estranged wife, Sophie. She left him shortly after Julian’s escape, and, after years without contact, wrote from Bogota, where she had been living with another man. She and the hatter corresponded regularly, always discussing Julian because, as the hatter admits, their son was the only thing binding them together.

Two Lost Loves

The saying’s force comes from its double application. The hatter is certain that Penelope is the love of Julian’s life, but the narrative also suggests that he himself put off falling in love with Sophie until it was too late. His insistence about the singularity of love therefore carries more than a father’s judgment of his son: it is shaped by his own experience of separation and belated understanding.

Love, Search, and Loss

The hatter believes that helping Julian find Penelope might also recover some part of what he had lost with Sophie. His hope is set against his search’s failure: despite combing Barcelona, he finds no trace of Penelope or her family. Fifteen years of ruin and destitution have erased the Aldayas’ mansions, industries, and even the visible footprints of their dynasty. The saying offers a conviction about love’s permanence, but the search reveals how little that conviction can restore once people and lives have been separated by time.