Andrew Sean Greer said this quote

A lover exists only in fragments, a dozen or so if the romance is new, a thousand if we're married to him, and out of those fragments our heart constructs an entire person. What we each create, since whatever is missing is filled by our imagination, is the person we wish him to be. The less we know him, of course, the more we love him. And that's why we always remember that first rapturous night when he was a stranger, and why this rapture returns only when he's dead.

~ Andrew Sean Greer

Perhaps love is a minor madness. And as with madness, it's unendurable alone. The one person who can relieve us is of course the sole person we cannot go to: the one we love. So instead we seek out allies, even among strangers and wives, fellow patients who, if they can't touch the edge of our particular sorrow, have felt something that cuts nearly as deep.

~ Andrew Sean Greer

When I meet a woman whose energy falters at the first barrier,she seems to fade beside my mother.

~ Andrew Sean Greer

Change was not something you waited for, quietly, mutely, in a house by the ocean, nothing would ever change unless we forced it into shape.

~ Andrew Sean Greer