I meditated on love and reasoned it out. I realized what is wrong with us. Men fall in love for the first time. And what do they fall in love with?...They fall in love with a woman. They start at the wrong end of love. They begin at the climax. Can you wonder it is so miserable? Do you know how men should love? A tree. A rock. A cloud.

Collected Short Stories: And the Novel The Ballad of the Sad Café (ed. 1955)