The Real Thing - Tom Stoppard

It's those little touches that lift adultery out of the moral arena and make it a matter of style.

HENRY: Are you all right? (ANNIE nods.)
ANNIE: Are you all right? (HENRY nods.)
Touch me.
(HENRY shakes his head.)
Touch me.
HENRY: No.
ANNIE: Come on, touch me.
Help yourself.
Tuch me anywhere you like.
HENRY: No.
ANNIE: Touch me.
HENRY: No.
ANNIE: Coward.
HENRY: I love you anyway.
ANNIE: Yes, say that.
HENRY: I love you.
ANNIE: Go on.
HENRY: I love you.
ANNIE: That's it.
HENRY: I love you.
ANNIE: Touch me then. They'll come in or they won't.  Take a chance. Kiss me.
HENRY: For Christ's sake.
ANNIE: Quick one on the carpet then.
HENRY: You're crackers.
ANNIE: I'm not interested in your mind.
HENRY: Yes you are.
HENRY: No, I'm not, I lied to you.
(Pause.  HENRY smiles at her.)
I hate Sunday.

I love love.  I love having a lover and being one.  The insularity of passion.  I love it.  I love the way it blurs the distinction between everyone who isn't one's lover.
Only two kinds of presence in the world.  There's you and there's them.
I love you so.

The first time I succumbed to the sensation that the universe was dispensable minus one lady - It's to do with knowing and being known.  I remember how it stopped seeming odd that in biblical Greek knowing was used for making love.  Whosit knew so-and-so.  Carnal knowledge.  It's what lovers trust each other with.  Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh but through the flesh, knowledge of self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face.  Every  other version of oneself is on offer to the public.  We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy... we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation.  Our lovers share us with the passing trade.  But in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other.  What selves?  What's left?  What else is there that hasn't been dealt out like a deck of cards?  Carnal knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised.  Knowing, being known.  I revere that.  Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what's shared - she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes and dances on the tables, she's everybody's and it don't mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while it's held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to known, and when it's gone everything is pain.  Every single thing.  Every object that meets the eye, a pencil, a tangerine, a travel poster.  As if the physical world has been wired up to pass a current back to the part of your brain where imagination glows like a filament in a lobe no bigger than a torch bulb.  Pain.

CHARLOTTE:  There are no commitments, only bargains.  And they have to be made again every day.  You think making a commitment is it.  Finish.  You think it sets like a concrete platform and it'll take any strain you want to put on it.  You're committed.  You don't have to prove anything.  In fact you can afford a little neglect, indulge in a little bit of sarcasm here and there, isolate yourself when you want to.  Underneath it's concrete for life.  I'm a cow in some ways, but you're an idiot.  Were an idiot.

HENRY:  What was that? (Pause) Oh... yes.  No commitments.  Only bargains.  The trouble is I don't really believe it.  I'd rather be an idiot.  It's a kind of idiocy I like. 'I use you because you love me.  I love you so use me.  Be indulgent, negligent, preoccupied, premenstrual... your credit is infinite, I'm yours, I'm committed... It's no trick loving somebody at their best.  Love is loving them at their worst.  Is that romantic?  Well, good.  Everything should be romantic.  Love, work, music, literature, virginity, loss of virginity...