Proust on Love as an Illusion We Create

(loosely adapted from various parts of Swann’s Way and Within a Budding Grove)

We are not in love with the person themselves, but with the idea we have formed of them.
And this idea, born of our solitude, is shaped by longing, carved by absence, and burnished by fantasy.
She became, in my mind, a figure of such subtle perfection that no reality could match her.
When we spoke, I listened more to the echo of what I wanted her to say than to her words.
We imagine love as discovery. But it is more often invention.
And what we discover, much later, is how much of ourselves we had projected onto someone else’s shadow.