This was what Miss Beryl had been coming back to, all day, all her life probably, to the mystery of affection, of the heart inclining in one direction and not another, of its unexpected, unwished-for pirouettes, its ability to make a fool, a villain, of its owner, if indeed any human can be said to own his heart. "I know this," she'd told Clive Sr. that long-ago afternoon. "Love is a stupid thing." It was, then and now, her final wisdom on the subject.

Richard Russo, Nobody's Fool