Marie Lopez

“What is given by nature is not necessarily good, what is achieved by artifice is not necessarily worthless.”
― John Armstrong, Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy

“Unhappiness isn't at its most acute point until a realistic chance of happiness, sufficiently close, has been envisioned.”
― Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

“[Poem II]

I wake up in your bed. I know I have been dreaming.
Much earlier, the alarm broke us from each other,
you’ve been at your desk for hours. I know what I dreamed:
our friend the poet comes into my room
where I’ve been writing for days,
drafts, carbons, poems are scattered everywhere,
and I want to show her one poem
which is the poem of my life. But I hesitate,
and wake. You’ve kissed my hair
to wake me. I dreamed you were a poem,
I say, a poem I wanted to show someone …
and I laugh and fall dreaming again
of the desire to show you to everyone I love,
to move openly together
in the pull of gravity, which is not simple,
which carries the feathered grass a long way down the upbreathing air.”
― Adrienne Rich, Twenty-One Love Poems.

“Compatibility, on this view, is an achievement of love, not a precondition for love.”
― John Armstrong, Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy