14. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis De Berneires

"And another thing. Love is temporary madness, it erupts like volcanos and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have soentwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desider to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. That is just being "in love", which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunte accident. Your other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two. But sometimes the petals fall away and the roots have not entwined. Imagine giving up your home and your people, only to discover after six months, a year, three years, that the trees have had no rotts and have fallen over. Imagine the desolation. Imagine the imprisonment."