Roland Barthes quote #337 from A Lover's Discourse: Fragments
You see the first thing we love is a scene. For love at first sight requires the very sign of its suddenness and of all things it is the scene which seems to be seen best for the first time a curtain parts and what had not yet ever been seen is devoured by the eyes the scene consecrates the object I am going to love. The context is the constellation of elements harmoniously arranged that encompass the experience of the amorous subject...Love at first sight is always spoken in the past tense. The scene is perfectly adapted to this temporal phenomenon distinct abrupt framed it is already a memory the nature of a photograph is not to represent but to memorialize... this scene has all the magnificence of an accident I cannot get over having had this good fortune to meet what matches my desire.The gesture of the amorous embrace seems to fulfill for a time the subjects dream of total union with the loved being The longing for consummation with the other... In this moment everything is suspended time law prohibition nothing is exhausted nothing is wanted all desires are abolished for they seem definitively fulfilled... A moment of affirmation for a certain time though a finite one a deranged interval something has been successful I have been fulfilled all my desires abolished by the plenitude of their satisfaction.