You have to walk carefully in the beginning of love; the running across fields into your lover’s arms can only come later when you’re sure they won’t laugh if you trip. – Jonathan Carroll, “Outside the Dog Museum”

Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species. – W. Somerset Maugham, A Writer’s Notebook, 1949

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person. – W. Somerset Maugham