촌철살인이다. 한 마디 한 마디가 가슴에 쭉쭉 와닿아서 한 번 들면 놓기가 어렵다. 회사일 때문에 갤탭에는 회사계정의 킨들을 받아 놓은 상태라 큰 화면에서 읽지 못하고 갤에스 투 핸드폰으로 읽는데도 손에서 놓아지지가 않는다. 한 번 읽고 날 때마다 눈이 건조해지고 부셔져서 눈물과 뻐근한 어깨라는 후유증을 남기지만. 역시 책은 종이로 읽어야 하는 것인가...
남자의 관점에서 쓴 사랑에 대한 에세이. 역시 남자는 그렇게 단순한 동물은 아니었던거지. 근데 남자의 관점에서 그려지는 이야기에서 자꾸 나를 보는 이유는 무엇일까? 사랑이야기이기 때문에 전세계 보편적인 것이겠지만, 내가 보여서 그런지 자꾸 읽게 된다. 사랑의 감정이라는 것은 소설에서 그려지는 것처럼 참 괴물같은 것이다. 처음엔 좋아서 어쩔줄 모르고 진부한 표현이이지만 세상을 다 얻은 것 같은 환희를 느낀다. 그러다가 한 순간에 식어버리는 감정으로 놀라게 되기도 하고. 한 때 그렇게도 사랑했던 사람도, 그 사랑도 결국에는 추억으로만 남게 되고. 때로는 사소한 한 가지가 싫어서 좋은 인연을 놓치게 되고.
"We fall in love hoping we won't find in another what we know is in ourselves, all the cowardice, weakness, laziness, dishonesty, compromise, and stupidity."
"But actually, I like looking at things and not knowing quite what they mean."
"The most attractive are not those who allow us to kiss them at once (we soon feel ungrateful) or those who never allow us to kiss them (we soon forget them), but those who know how carefully to administer varied doses of hope and despair."
"They believe in it, but pretend they don't until they're allowed to."
"It is one of the ironies of love that it is easiest confidently to seduce those to whom we are least attracted."
"Sex is instinctive, unreflexive and spontaneous, while thought is careful, uninvolved, and judgemental. To think during sex is to violate a fundamental law of intercourse."
"If in order to love, we must believe that the beloved surpasses us in some way, does not a cruel paradox emerge when we witness this love returned? If he really is so wonderful, how he could love someone like me?"
"It may be a sign that to people have stopped loving one another (or at leasr stopped wishing to make the effort that constitutes ninety percent of love) when they are no longer able to spin differences into jokes."
"Love reveals its insanity by its refusal to acknowledge the inherent normality of the loved one."
"Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone there who can understand what we are saying, in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved."
"A notorious inability to express emotion makes human beings the only animals capable of suicide."