The Morning News

In this spirit, sort of, if you read him the following bit from Brian Moore’s great novel, The Luck of Ginger Coffey, and there’s a spark of recognition or even something like exhilaration flickers across his face—he loves you, and he could very well continue to love you for a long, long time. Yes, it’s a test:

Love isn’t an act, it’s a whole life. It’s staying with her now because she needs you; it’s knowing you and she will still care about each other when sex and daydreams, fights and futures—when all that’s on the shelf and done with. Love—why, I’ll tell you what love is: it’s you at seventy-five and her at seventy-one, each of you listening for the other’s step in the next room, each afraid that a sudden silence, a sudden cry, could mean a lifetime’s talk is over.

(Does He Love You? by Pasha Malla)