To love in the sense of passion-love is the contrary of to live. It is an impoverishment of one's being, an askesis without sequel, an inability to enjoy the present without imagining it as absent, a never-ending flight from possession.

One possessed a thousand and three women (in Spain alone), the other only one. But it is multiplicity that is impoverished, whilethe entire world is concentrated in a single being infinitely possessed. Tristan no longer needs the world--because he loves! While Don Juan, always loved, cannot love in return. Hence his anguish and his frenzied course.

What stirs lyrical poets to their finest flights is neither the delight of the senses nor the fruitful contentment of the settled couple not the satisfaction of love, but its passion. And passion means suffering.

Happiness is indeed a Eurydice, vanishing as soon as gazed upon. It can exist only in acceptance, and succumbs as soon as it is laid claim to.

Social confusion has now reached a point at which the pursuit of immorality turns out to be more exhausting than compliance with the old moral codes.

A life allied with mine, for the rest of our lives... that is the miracle of marriage.

Romance only comes into existence where love is fatal, frowned upon and doomed by life itself.