American culture is torn between our long romance with violence and our terror of the devastation wrought by war and crime and environmental havoc.

Romance like a ghost escapes touching; it is always where you are not, not where you are. The interview or conversation was prose at the time, but it is poetry in the memory.

Wave after wave of love flooded the stage and washed over me, the beginning of the one great durable romance of my life.

Men know that most women want to have an emotional connection with someone before they sleep with them. Men know that a lot of women think it's romantic to be friends first, and then the friendship blossoms into a relationship. Men know that they have to jump through all these hoops first, before they can get laid. And that's really all romance and courtship is to a man: hoops he has to jump through to get laid.

OMG, I think I’ve become a feminist. I mean, I’ve always been in favor of women voting and being paid the same as men for doing the same job. But then, the other day on the train, I didn’t get up and give a woman my seat. I thought about it. But then I thought it might insult her, might imply that I considered her weaker than a senior citizen, maybe even inferior in some way. But that’s not what prompted me to fire up my laptop. I was brushing my teeth this morning and thinking about romance. People do that when they get older, I suppose. Romance is one area where men and women are still different—unisex lavatories and fashions notwithstanding. And here’s the difference: a romantic woman envisions a knight on a white horse; a romantic man envisions a dragon in a dark cave. Think about it next time you brush your teeth.

“I try not to kid myself. You know, I don't mind romancing someone else, but to fool yourself is pretty devastating and dangerous.”

My mother was an avid reader...She loved books about romance. Books that took place in faraway places and times. Stories with costumes...

She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.

When our focus is on seeking, perfecting, or clinging to romance, the charge is often generated by instability, rather than by an authentic connection with another person.

It's bullshit to think of friendship and romance as being different. They're not. They're just variations of the same love. Variations of the same desire to be close.