“I was completely and irrevocably in lust; which tends to make a person impassive to others’ pain. Love makes us compassionate. Lust makes us deaf to all but the lover.”

“Love makes us instinctively reach out to God and other people. Lust, on the other hand, is anything but godly and celebrates self-indulgence. Love comes with open hands and open heart; lust comes with only an open appetite.”

“Ah, lust. It makes us forget anything we want to. The greatest relaxant, the greatest stimulant.”

“No sacrifice which a lover would make for his beloved is too great for us to make for our enemy.”

“They'd never been lovers, of course, not in the physical sense. But they'd been lovers as most of us manage, loving through expressions and gestures and the palm set softly upon the bruise at the necessary moment. Lovers by inclination rather than by lust. Lovers, that is, by love.”

“I believe that rules do not make us moral; loving each other makes us moral.”