Flirting and Frustration** _How could I have known? Everything seemed so normal, so_ right. Then, at a certain moment, we all began to understand that a man is never just a man to the woman he has seduced. He is, for all the time he has spent before she knew him, a stranger, and it is only after he has known her for a time that she may begin to be able to understand what he was like before she met him. "How can I make it up to you?" he asks her. She hears these words as something she will have to forgive, something that was beyond her control, a necessary part of loving, not quite as much as love itself, but it must be taken with love. **Seduction and Loneliness** _What's the use of a world_ _where there's no one to talk to? What's the use of a heart_ _without a home? What's the use of a friend if he can't talk to you, or love you, or dance with you?_ —RICHARD WRIGHT, _Love Songs_ _It is the great joy of life to fall in love and to be given love._ —RABBI HILLEL _I can't live without you! I'm only trying to figure out what kind of love could be so good that all these others are bad._ —LEONARD BERNSTEIN, _The Beauty Queen of Leenane_ _I'm as far from being beautiful as I can be. But I'll always be a beauty to you._ —ROSE TREMAIN, "How Do You Spell _Lonesome_?" _There's an old story about the young man who made love to many women, to everyone and everywhere. They knew who he was, or rather that they knew who they had been. She was a virgin with her first lover. He was a virgin with his first love. The story ends in confusion and bewilderment, but what I think of is how many there are, and how many there might be, all of them just beginning._ —RICHARD WRIGHT, _A Part of Speech_ _One should never say "you are beautiful." That must be said to oneself, and the beauty will be one's own. But all the same it's very good for one to hear it from another person._ —VLADIMIR NABOKOV, _Lolita_ _I've never met anyone like you. I don't know if you love me or if you're just so tired you just want to be with me because you don't know who else to be with or why. Either way, it doesn't matter. I know we won't last, so I'm fine with whatever happens. I'm in love and I want you to let me be in love. I don't know who you are to me, but I know I love you. It doesn't have to make sense. Sometimes when we say things, we say them because they make sense at the time, but we don't really mean them and don't really understand why we say them. I don't know if this makes sense, but I want to say it because I can't not say it._ —BEVERLY JOHNSON, _Meat_ _They had met for coffee, as so often before, and he had said again how much he needed someone to help him, to encourage him, to encourage himself, his way through life's uncharted, or only partially charted, terrain. Yet she thought he must be looking for the most basic of needs to inspire him now._ _He said, "I'm a good man in a bad world." He said, "Nothing is sacred for me anymore, nothing is pure."_ _He said, "We've gone too far. We've gone too far." He said, "Why did you come, what did I do to make you care?"_ —ELLEN GOODMAN, _The End of Mr. Y_ _Often the person we fall in love with is our mother or someone who reminded us of her in a powerful, unexpected way._ —JOHN SEARLES, _When Nietzsche Wept_ **Heroineism** What is the nature of man? A question has often been asked. Man, it seems, must be given another chance to find out the nature of man. —SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR, _America Day by Day_ _Perhaps it would have been easier to have had him in some other way, some other way that would not have involved my giving so much of myself. I cannot begin to explain how often I have thought of the ways I would rather not have had the same feeling, the same need for him, or the same kind of love for him that I have known._ —JANE WAGNER, _Sense of Doubt_ _I have no need of love. And it is because of this that I'm able to be loved. It's not to earn love, but to give it. It's a gift, not something owed to me. And it seems that the more I'm loved, the more I love others. The more love comes my way, the more I love. And the more I give myself in love, the more love comes to me._ —ELLEN GOODMAN, _The End of Mr. Y_ _Love gives you the power to transcend yourself, to transcend what is known, the known world, the real, the truth. And in that transcending, you begin to create that new world. And that's where the real passion comes._ —STEPHEN DUNN _What will I give my child? What does a child need? What are all those things that I want my children to have? And what are all those things that I will not give them?_ —NANCY SILVERTON, _Lessons Before Dying_ _What we need is not charity but simply the idea of love. Love at a distance, love of the far-off, love of those who have lived and loved before._ —NORMAN DOUGLAS, _Requiem for a Nun_ _He has nothing to lose, he has nothing. For him love is something to be used: a tool to be sharpened, polished and put to use. Then he finds that he cannot love. He tries and tries, but he cannot love; he is afraid he has never loved anyone, that he is too weak, that he is incapable of loving. It is not true: he loves many times, but not the one to whom he wants to give everything._ —ROLAND BARTHES, _Writing a Novel_ _And this was what I believed: You can love, it says, but you cannot always love the one you love. Love's a burden. In fact, love is what we want most, we must want it, but not always to the one we love._ —MORENO DECHOVSKY, _Waiting for Godot_ _A child knows nothing of love and death; this is something a mother tells him._ —ALBERT CAMUS _To me, what love is really like is like an electric bulb that somebody turns on: it lights up everything._ —JOAN DIDION, _The White Album_ _There are always people who will say to you who you should and shouldn't love, but love is something to be made, not found. It takes effort, and there are no guarantees in the end. Most of the time, what we get from love is what we put into it._ —LOUISE GLÜCK, _The Last Painting of Sara de Vos_ _For me it is not a question of knowing what to love or what not to love. It is a question of knowing what to resist and what not to resist. . . . Love is a part of that resistance. Love does not take care of reality; it takes care of your reality._ —ANGELA VILAKAS, _On Nights Like These_ _One should try to love. The fact that one can't must be due to some defect of character._ —LAO-TZU, _Tao Te Ching_ _To be a woman is to know—and to accept—that all you have, all you will ever have, is life._ —COCO CHANEL, _The Lady and the Dogs_ _There is no love in the world so great as the love of woman. If you find your heart's desire you will keep it, for no woman will ever take it from you. But if you find her, keep her. For if the gods do not hold them sacred, who will? And in their keeping, you are free._ —ANTONIO DE FOLCH RABASSA, _Don Quixote de La Mancha_ _I'm a female. I am woman. I'm a human being like anybody else. I like good food and good sex as much as any