Essays in Love

Everyone returns us to a different sense of ourselves, for we become a little of who they think we are.

The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once (we soon feel ungrateful) or those who never allow us to kiss them (we soon forget them), but those who know how to carefully administer varied doses of hope and despair.

We fall in love hoping we won’t find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity.

'A man can acquire anything in solitude except a character,' wrote Stendhal, suggesting that character has its genesis in the reactions of others to our words and actions.

be loved by someone is to realize how much they share the same needs that lie at the heart of our own attraction to them

Beauty is the promise of happiness

“I know my daughter and you are fond of one another. I’m no expert on love, but I’ll tell you something. In the end, I’ve found that it doesn’t really matter who you marry. If you like them at the beginning, you probably won’t like them at the end. And if you start off hating them, there’s always the chance you’ll end up thinking they’re all right.”

What have I done to deserve this?”

“But actually, I like looking at things and not knowing quite what they mean.”

It was the error of thinking that Chloe, rather than love, was inevitable.