Cesare Pavese on Love

"When a man mourns for someone who has played him false, it is not for love of her, but for his own humiliation at not having deserved her trust."

"No woman marries for money: they are all clever enough, before marrying a millionaire, to fall in love with him."

"Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared."

"We must never say, even in fun, that we are disheartened, because someone might take us at our word."

"Love has the faculty of making two lovers seem naked, not in each other's sight, but in their own."

"We care so little of other people than even Christianity urges us to do good for the love of God."

"All our "most sacred affections" are merely prosaic habit."

"What we desire is not to possess a woman, but to be the only one to possess her."

"Love is the cheapest of religions."

"The problem is not the harshness of Fate, for anything we want strongly enough we get. The trouble is rather that when we have it we grow sick of it, and then we should never blame Fate, only our own desire."

"Great lovers will always be unhappy, because, for them, love is of supreme importance. Consequently they demand of their beloved the same intensity of thought as they have for her, otherwise they feel betrayed."

"See, you're like all the others. But don't you understand that we can't quarrel? We love each other. If I could hate him the way I hate myself, then of course I would abuse him. But neither of us deserves it. See?"

"In fact a man in love or one consumed with hatred creates symbols for himself, as a superstitious man does, from a passion of conferring uniqueness on things or persons. A man who knows nothing of symbols is one of Dante's sluggards. This is why art mirrors itself in primitive rites or strong passions, seeking for symbols, revolving round the primitive taste for savagery, for what is irrational ."