Maturity: the confidence to have no opinions on many things.

An argument in a couple: 2 people attempting to introduce each other to important truths - by panicked shouting.

If it is true that love is the pursuit in another of qualities we lack in ourselves, then in our love of someone from another culture, one ambition may be to weld ourselves more closely to values missing from our own culture.

Perhaps because the origins of a certain kind of love lie in an impulse to escape ourselves and out weaknesses by an alliance with the beautiful and noble. But if the loved ones love us back, we are forced to return to ourselves, and are hence reminded of the things that had driven us into love in the first place. Perhaps it was not love we wanted after all, perhaps it was simply someone in whom to believe, but how can we continue to believe the the beloved now that they believe in us?

One of love's greatest drawbacks is that, for a while at least, it is in danger of making us happy.

The only possible way to begin a book is to tell oneself that its eventual failure is guaranteed — but survivable.

To one's enemies: "I hate myself more than you ever could.