love

I'm against it because it is falling in love. The only obsession everyone wants: 'love'. People think that in falling in love they make themselves whole? The Platonic union of souls? I think otherwise. I think you're whole before you begin. And the love fractures you. You're whole, and then you're cracked open. She was a foreign body introduced into your wholeness. And for a year and a half you struggled to incorporate it. But you'll never be whole until you expel it. You either get rid of it or you incorporate it through self-distortion. And that's what you did and what drove you mad.

in The Dying Animal
Philip Roth