"Writing more beautifully" column: How to truly write about love

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"Vincent, Francois, Paul and the others", a film by Claude Sautet from 1974, with Michel Piccoli (left), Yves Montand and Gérard Depardieu (right)

Photo: United Archives / Impress / picture alliance

"We talked and drank, drank and talked, and at some point - it was long a black night outside - we came to talk about the first love, and the last, and what lies in between, all the paths that the heart goes, astray and yet towards a goal.

The other residents said little, but they knew that too, the flames into which the most sheltered one sometimes throws himself cheering. "

- Urs Widmer, 

Almost all books, like most films, are, in one way or another, about love.

How it begins;

how it disappears;

what she does to you.

How it is threatened, by trifles, by habit.

What if it is missing. 

Two people fall in love, that's how it often starts, but of course it doesn't stay that way.

Often a third party appears or a third party.

The characters fight, they suffer, they carry on.

And because the secret of books, just like films, is "identification", the reader suffers too.

By following the paths that the heart takes, he learns a lot about love and sometimes something about himself. 

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