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I think that the romantic impulse is in all of us and that sometimes we live it for a short time, but it's not part of a sensible way of living. It's a heroic path and it generally ends dangerously. I treasure it in the sense that I believe it's a path of great courage. It can also be the path of the foolhardy and the compulsive.

Romanticism is not just about being in a fixed state of endless beauty, because you can't live like that or live on that, that's what I've learnt.

The essence of romantic love is that wonderful beginning, after which sadness and impossibility may become the rule.

Here is the root of all romanticism: that man, the individual, is an infinite reservoir of possibilities, and if you can so rearrange society by the destruction of oppressive order, then these possibilities will have a chance, and you will get Progress.

I think one of the downsides of the sort of obsession with romantic love and personal fulfillment is that the plain fact of the matter is that those feelings don't last for ever and so they better be replaced and reinforced by things that do.

Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames.

It's the pursuit of love and happiness that is the driving force of the romantic novel.

Is this not the true romantic feeling; not to desire to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping you.

The concept of romantic love affords a means of emotional manipulation which the male is free to exploit, since love is the only circumstance in which the female is (ideologically) pardoned for sexual activity.

I think the whole tension about romanticism is the way it builds and builds, and the moment it's consummated, the tension's over.