Abhi, one of our bloggers, has a great post on the film Before Sunset and the absinthe of fiction. He just posted it, hasn't told me about it or asked me to link it, but it's deliciously, deliriously romantic:
Fiction is a heartless charlatan... You are incapable of a normal relationship because normal is a pale substitution for what already flows in your veins: possibility... Years later you don't fit anymore. You stand out like a heroin addict on a Friday night, wearing long sleeves so no one will notice.
On losing a deep connection:
Is it possible that you can experience a period of time so perfect, so idealized, that it stains your soul with a color that nothing else can ever match? If so, aren't you screwed for the rest of your days?... [A]ll the things that I spend the majority of my Time doing, are really motivated by one thing. Finding a color to match the stain.
On Before Sunrise, which still plays pied piper to the romantic:
I was listening to conversations I had already had with people in my own life, or had debated in my head. Here they were laid out naked on the screen, stitched together in arrangements that I had failed to consider... I would have done all the same things, said all the same words.
