The nature of love

The world we create day after day out of inertia is full of evil. But we can’t break the vicious circle because we don’t know how to create anything else. Love has a completely different nature, and that’s precisely why there’s so little of it in our lives. Or rather, our life is the way it is precisely because there’s no love in it. And what people mistake for love is in most cases physical attraction and parental instinct, multiplied by social vanity.

Love isn’t when someone loves you. You can’t directly feel another’s love, because we don’t have a sense organ capable of that kind of perception. You’ll simply receive from the one who loves you a bunch of gifts and watch them fiddle with your body. You can only feel your own love — when you love another. Remember, real love is when you are the one who loves.

Pelevin