Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time.

And only now, when he was gray-haired, had he fallen in love properly, thoroughly, for the first time in his life.

It was the first time I was ever in love, and I learned a lot. Before that I'd never even thought about killing myself.

Maybe because I had been out very late the night before and was not able to put up my usual resistance, but it seemed to me, sitting there with the sound of his voice dying in my ears, that I could fall in love with him. And then, as unexpected as a hidden step, I felt myself actually stumble and fall. And there it was, I was in love with him! As simple as that. He was the first real person I’d ever been in love with. I couldn’t get over it. What I was trying to figure out was why I had never been in love with him before. I mean I’d had plenty of chance to. I’d seen him almost daily that summer in Maine two years ago when we were both in a Summer Stock company. … He was always rather nice to me in his insolent way, but there was also, I now remembered with a passing pang, an utterly ravishing girl, a model, the absolute epitome of glamour, called Lila. She used to come up at week ends to see him. Then I heard from someone that he’d quit college the next winter and gone abroad to become a genius. I’d met him again when I first landed in Paris. He’d been very nice, bought me a drink, taken down my telephone number and never called me. You’re a dead duck now, I told myself, as I relaxed back into my coma. You’re gone. I looked at him, smiling idly. I tried to imagine what was going on in his mind.

I was the first man to fall in love with you, son of Clinias, and now that the others have stopped pursuing you I suppose you're wondering why I'm the only one who hasn't given up - and also why, when the others pestered you with conversation, I never even spoke to you all these years. Human causes didn't enter into it; I was prevented by some divine being, the effect of which you'll hear later on. But now it no longer prevents me, so here I am. I'm confident it won't prevent me in future either.

Truly, my first love.

I don't know what falling in love for me is. The concept of romantic love arose in the Middle Ages. Now remember, the Arabs don't even have a word for love — that is, a word for love apart from physical attraction or sex. And this separation of love and sex is a western concept, a Christian concept. As to what falling in love means, I'm uncertain. Love, well, it means simply physical attraction and liking a person at the same time.

He fell in love with himself at first sight and it is a passion to which he has always remained faithful.

I was deeply, delightfully in love with a guy whose forceful intellect and ambition could possibly end up swallowing mine.

I was not yet in love, yet I loved to love...I sought what I might love, in love with loving.

I can't pinpoint the exact moment in time when I realised I was falling in love, but my move to California had a lot to do with it. Once immersed in an openly gay environment, I quickly understood that men loving men (and women loving women) was normal. It was BEAUTIFUL, in fact. […] And let's just say in West Hollywood, you see a lot of gay people. They're everywhere, unashamedly being true to who they are, and who they love. It was the single most refreshing thing to witness. […] Those couples became a symbol of hope to me, and to see them firsthand made me think it was possible for me to be like them. To love. To be happy. It was actually possible to dream of the future. The future I wanted to have.

But I want her to grow up knowing that I was the first man ever to fall in love with her. I'd always thought the father/daughter thing was overstated. But I can tell you, sometimes, she looks at me and I just become a puddle.

And do you know Monsieur Marius? I believe I was a little in love with you.

If I hadn't met you, I'd certainly have fallen in love with him.