But love that word... Horacio the moralist, fearful of passions born without some deep-water reason, disconcerted and surly in the city where love is called by all the names of all the streets, all the buildings, all the flats, all the rooms, all the beds, all the things forgotten or remembered. My love, I do not love you for you or for me or for all of us together, I do not love you because my blood tells me to love you, I love you because you are not mine, because you are from the other side, from there you invite me to jump and I cannot make the jump, because in the deepest moment of possession you are not mine, I cannot reach you, I cannot get beyond your body, your laugh, there are times when it torments me that you love me (how you like to use the verb to love, with what vulgarity you toss it around among plates and sheets and buses), I am tormented by your love because I cannot not use it as a bridge because a bridge cannot be supported by just one side, Wright or Le Corbusier will never make a bridge that is supported by just one side, and don't look at me with those bird's eyes, for you the operation of love is simple, you'll be cured before me even if you love me as I do not love you. Of course you'll be cured, because you're living in health, after me it'll be someone else, you can change things the way you do a blouse. So sad to listen to Horacio, the cynic who wants a passport-love, a mountain-pass love, a key-love, a revolver-love, a love that will give him the thousand eyes of Argos, ubiquity, the silence out of which music is possible, the root out of which a language can be woven.

— Julio Cortázar, Hopscotch