"in both friendship and love, the expectation that one's expressive (if not best) self will flower in the presence of the beloved other is key. upon that flowering all is posited. but what if the restless, the fluid, the mercurial, within each of us is steadily undermining the very thing we think we most want? what, in fact, if the assumption of a self in need of expressiveness is an illusion? what if the urge toward stable intimacy is perpetually threatened by an equally great, if not greater, urge toward destabilization? what then?"
-vivian gornick, the odd woman and the city
