Popular Quotes

Romantic ideas about the heart fly in the face of known fact, but that doesn't matter and never has. People many thousands of years ago knew that the heart is basically a blood pump, but that didn't keep them from also believing it was the seat of romantic love (and all other strong emotion).

Romantic love came under attack, first from the Freudians and then from the neuroscientists, who said that being in love was a chemical reaction in the brain. Marriage is no longer seen as a lifetime commitment.

Romantic love can be terrifying. We experience another human being as enormously important to us. So there is surrender - not a surrender to the other person so much as to our feeling for the other person. What is the obstacle? The possibility of loss.

Romantic lovers require from each other at least the facade of reason: We desire to be what romantic love makes us appear in the other's eyes. We want to imagine we are deserving of the love we inspire.