'Love: not a rising tide of bodily fluids and hormones, a psychological mess to be cleared up by YM questionairres about "Is it the Real Thing?" Love: an act of will, a gift given without reservation and, in a sense, irrationally. Philosophical gobbledygook about "rathionally self-interested morality" holds no sway in the courts of love. Love is madness. It is not the stupid, drippy, half-imbecilic madness that oozes off the screen in a romantic comedy. That sort of madness is far too sane for love. No, love is the sort of madness that makes people declare that they are going to fly to the moon, or build massive coral castles for their "sweet sixteen." To declare that you love another human being is to drop yourself off the edge into the mythic stream of reality, to consent to be carried along through unmapped realms, smashed against the rocks, shipwrecked, cast up gasping on alien beaches, and then rushed off to float through halcyon seas under a sky as broad as heaven. Once you have done it, there is no returning. You can swim against the current, lug yourself up onto the beach, and wander off, bruised and disheveled, hoping that somewhere over the rainbow there is another, gentler river, but you will never make it back to that state of innocence from which you undertook the journey in the first place.'
Melinda Selmys, Sexual Authenticity, p.101.
