"Despite the difficulties of my story, despite discomforts, doubts, despairs, despite impulses to be done with it, I unceasingly affirm love, within myself, as a value. Though I listen to all the arguments which the most divergent systems employ to demystify, to limit, to erase, in short to depreciate love, I persist : " I know, I know, but all the same . . . " I refer the devaluations of love to a kind of obscurantist ethic, to a let's-pretend realism, against which I erect the realism of value: I counter whatever "doesn't work " in love with the affirmation of what is worthwhile. This stubbornness is love's protest : for all the wealth of "good reasons" for loving differently, loving better, loving without being in love, etc., a stubborn voice is raised which lasts a little longer: the voice of the Intractable lover" - Barthes 1978
