“Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames.”
Thomas More
“For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.”
Judy Garland
“Romantic love, in pornography as in life, is the mythic celebration of female negation. For a woman, love is defined as her willingness to submit to her own annihilation. The proof of love is that she is willing to be destroyed by the one whom she loves, for his sake. For the woman, love is always self-sacrifice, the sacrifice of identity, will, and bodily integrity, in order to fulfill and redeem the masculinity of her lover.”
Andrea Dworkin
“We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity - romantic love and gunpowder.”
Andre Maurois
“Romantic love is mental illness. But it's a pleasurable one. It's a drug. It distorts reality, and that's the point of it. It would be impossible to fall in love with someone that you really saw.”
Fran Lebowitz
“The most successful marriages, gay or straight, even if they begin in romantic love, often become friendships. It's the ones that become the friendships that last.”
Andrew Sullivan
“The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.”
Anita Brookner
