* Most people would throw away all their cynicism if they could.

The majority just

never get the chance.

* Unrequited love may be painful, but it is safely painful, because it does not
involve inflicting damage on anyone but oneself, a private pain that is as bittersweet as it is self-induced. But as soon as love is reciprocated, one must be
prepared to give up the passivity of simply being hurt to take on the
responsibility of perpetrating hurt oneself.

* Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom we know
nothing.

* I did not love Chloe for her body, I loved her body for the promise of who she
was. It was a most inspiring promise.

* Lovers cannot remain philosophers for long, they should give way to the
religious impulse, which is to believe and have faith, as opposed to the
philosophical impulse, which is to doubt and enquire. They should prefer the risk
of being wrong and in love to being in doubt and without love.

* However happy we may be with our partner, our love for them necessarily
hinders us from pursuing alternatives. Why should this constrain us if we love
them? Why should we feel this as a loss unless our love for them has already
begun to wane? Because in resolving our need to love, we do not always succeed
in resolving our need to long.

* The unknown carries with it a mirror of all our deepest, most inexpressible
wishes. The unknown is the fatal proposition that a face seen across the room
will always hold out to the known. I may have loved Chloe but because I knew
Chloe, I did not long for her. Longing cannot indefinitely direct itself at those we
know, for their qualities are charted and therefore lack the mystery longing
demands.

* Why don't you love me? is as impossible a question (though a far less pleasant
one) to ask as Why do you love me? In both cases, we come up against our lack
of conscious control in the amorous structure, the fact that love has been
brought to us as a gift for reasons we never wholly determine or deserve. To ask
such questions, we are forced to veer on one side towards complete arrogance,

on the other to complete humility: What have I done to deserve love? asks the
humble lover; I can have done nothing. What have I done to be denied love?
protests the betrayed one, arrogantly claiming possession of a gift that is never
one's due. To both questions, the one who hands out love can only reply:
Because you are you an answer that leaves the beloved dangerously and
unpredictably strung between grandiosity and depression.

* ... there is a great difference between identifying a problem and solving it,
between wisdom and the wise life. We are all more intelligent than we are
capable, and awareness of the insanity of love has never saved anyone from the
disease.