"Every amorous episode can be, of course, endowed with a meaning: it is generated, develops, and dies; it follows a path which it is always possible to interpret according to a causality or a finality—even, if need be, which can be moralized (‘I was out of my mind, I’m over it now” “Love is a trap which must be avoided from now on” etc.): this is the love story, subjugated to the great narrative Other, to that general opinion which disparages any excessive force and wants the subject himself to reduce the great imaginary current, the orderless, endless stream which is passing through him, to a painful, morbid crisis of which he must be cured."
— Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse (via distantheartbeats)
