“O amor começa por uma metáfora. Ou melhor: o amor começa no momento em que uma mulher se inscreve com uma palavra em nossa memória poética”

A insustentável Leveza do Ser, Millan Kundera

Tomás vivia obcecado pelo desejo de descobrir esse milionésimo e de apoderar‑se dele, e esse era o sentido que dava à sua obsessão por mulheres. Não vivia obcecado pelas mulheres, vivia era obcecado pelo que cada uma delas tem de inimaginável ou, por outras palavras, vivia obcecado por esse milionésimo de diferente que faz com que uma mulher se distinga das outras.

Idem

Aquele que deseja continuadamente “elevar-se” deve esperar um dia pela vertigem

Ibidem

Women get it wrong when they complain about media images of women. Men understand that not everyone has Bardot’s breasts, or Jamie Lee Curtis’ neck, or Felicity Kendall’s bottom, and we don’t mind at all. Obviously we’d take Kim Basinger over Hattie Jacques, just as women would take Keanu Reeves over Bernard Manning, but it’s not the body that’s important, it’s the level of abasement. We worked out very quickly that bond girls were out of our league, but the realization that women don’t ever look at us the way Ursula andress looked at Sean Connery, or even in the way that Doris Day looked at Rock Hudson, was much slower to arrive, for most of us. In my case I’m not at all sure that it ever did.
I’m beginning to get used to the idea that Laura might be the person I Spend my life with, I think ( or at least, I’m beginning to get used to the idea that I’m so miserable without her that it’s not worth thinking about alternatives).  But it’s much harder to get used to the idea that my little-boy notion of romance, of négligés and candlelit dinners at home and long, smoldering glances, had no basis in reality at all. That’s what women ought to get all steamed up about; that’s why we can’t function properly in a relationship. It’s not the cellulite or the crow’s feet. It’s the…..the….. the disrespect.

High Fidelity, Nick Hornby