Being in Love

Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides. And when it subsides, you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion, it is not the desire to mate every second minute of the day, it is not lying awake at night imagining that he is kissing every cranny of your body. No, don't blush, I am telling you some truths. That is just being "in love", which any fool can do. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.

Louis de Bernière
Captain Corelli's Mandolin, released simultaneously as Corelli's Mandolin^[1] in the United States, is a 1994^[2] novelwritten by Louis de Bernières which takes place on the Greek island of Cephallonia (Kefalonia) during the Italian and German occupation of World War II.