L’amour, tu sais, ce dont il a le plus besoin, c’est l’imagination. Il faut que chacun invente l’autre avec toute son imagination, avec toutes ses forces et qu’il ne cède pas un pouce du terrain à la réalité ; alors, là, lorsque deux imaginations se rencontrent… Il n’y a rien de plus beau.

Not that I had any intention of accosting him to propose any practical agreement. That would have demanded on Laura's part a degree of devotion, of understanding, a detached view of the purely animal act of love, such as could not be expected of so young a woman who was so subject conventions of comportment in a society that had always shown itself incapable of differentiating between love and sexuality.

דבר שאינו בראש ובראשונה פרי-הדמיון אינו ראוי שיחיו אותו. שאם לא כן, מהו ים - רק מים מלוחים ותו לא.... אני, למשל, כבר חמשים שנה אני ממציא בלי הרף את אשתי. בשום פנים ואופן לא נתתי לה להזדקן. היא ודאי מלאה וגדושה מגרעות, שאני הפכתין למעלות. ואני בעיניה אדם מופלא. גם היא לא חדלה אף פעם להמציא אותי.

— You're nice. You aren't like the rest of them. I like you very much...— I've done nothing to deserve that.— One doesn't have to do anything to deserve that...

(...) il fallait séparer nos souffles, s'écarter, s'espacer, se lever, se dédoubler, et c'est toujours autant de perdu. Quand on a deux corps, il vient des moments où l'on est à moitié.- Est-ce que je suis envahissante?- Terriblement, lorsque tu n'es pas là.

Quand on a deux corps, il vient des moments où l'on est à moitié.

Look, what do you think it matters to me, all that - all that business of - of the body? Do you suppose I actually picked you, of my own free will? As if I'd gone out shopping and decided you were the best buy for the money? I had no choice at all... You're you, and there's no one, nothing else. We talk about 'falling' in love. Well, I 'fell.

Slowly I felt flooded with that agonizing and poignant confusion that surely comes to all aging men experiencing their first adolescent love. I had no great wish to go on living; what was the point of a flawed happiness. According to Bonnard, the hardest moment of all is when the artist longs to keep on but he’s conscience tells him that one brushstroke more will spoil the entire painting. And man has to know when to stop.

There is, of course, Niemen, in Switzerland, and Horsschitt, in Germany... It all depends on what you mean by ‘love’.