“loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.”

“But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science , instantly fades away. ”

“The old duality of body and soul has become shrouded in scientific terminology, and we can laugh at it as merely an obsolete prejudice.But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science, instantly fades away.”

“he realized he had no idea whether it was hysteria or love”

“Where are all those virtues of unreason that have shaped our idea of love?”

“Looking out over the courtyard at the dirty walls, he realized he had no idea whether it was hysteria or love.”

“Leroy's reasoning is dry as a razor, and Chantal agrees: love as an exaltation of two individuals, love as fidelity, passionate attachment to a single person - no, that doesn't exist. And if it does exist, it is only as self-punishment, willful blindness, escape into a monastery. She tells herself that even if it does exist, love ought not to exist, and the idea does not maker her bitter, on the contrary, it produces a bliss that spreads throughout her body. She thinks of the metaphor of the rose that moves through all men and tells herself that she has been living locked away by love and now she is ready to obey the myth of the rose and merge with its giddy fragrance. ”