She said: “It seems to me that everyone has a quality that can get  the better of love. Is stronger, you see. Like pride. Or honesty. Or moral – even intellectual, even emotional – integrity. Take two people in love. The only thing that can really upset things is this personal quality in one of them. Other people don’t come into it at all. Except in a roundabout way – as intruments of jealousy, for instance. Don’t you agree?”
I wasn’t sure about anything, but I said yes.
“Another thing about love,” the girl with ringlets said, “is its extraordinary infection. Has it ever occured to you that when you’re in love with someone you’re really wanting to be loved yourself? Because that, of course is the natural law. I mean, it would be odd if every time one person loved another person the first person wasn’t loved in return. There’s only a very tiny percentage of that kind of thing.”
The Day We Got Drunk Over Cake |William Trevor