You ask me whether I have ever been in love: fool as I am, I am not quite such a fool as all that. But if one is only to talk from firsthand experience on any subject, conversation would be a very poor business. But though I have no personal experience of the thing they call love, I have what is better—the experience of Sappho, of Euripides of Catullus of Shakespeare of Spenser of Austen of Brontë of, of—anyone else I have read. We see through their eyes. And as the greater includes the less, the passion of a great mind includes all the qualities of the passion of a small one. Accordingly, we have every right to talk about it.
Letter to Arthur Greeves, October 12, 1915