love deconstructed

i've long been curious to read this book, since i heard of roland barthes. it's been quoted in essays and such. and finally, i'm starting to read it!

i can't pretend to understand everything (well, even much) about literary theory. but this has made me want to strive to at least better appreciate it. as an "intro", it says:
the lover's discourse is today of an extreme solitude. This discourse is spoken, perhaps, by thousands of subjects (who knows?), but warranted by no one.

barthes tries to look at love not as the romantic concept or emotion, but studies, examines it objectively, as if it were any other thing --that is, not given the value that we usually give it. and, leafing through the book, i found some interesting quotables...from a section titled "The Uncertainty of Signs":
(Balzac)
I look for signs, but of what? What is the object of my reading? Is it: am I loved (am I loved no longer, am I still loved)? Is it my future that I am trying to read, deciphering in what is inscribed the announcement of what will happen to me, according to a method which combines paleography and manticism? Isn't it rather, all things considered, that I remain suspended on this question, whose answer I tirelessly seek in the other's face: What am I worth?
(Freud & Gide)
Freud to his fiancee: "The only thing that makes me suffer is being in a situation where it is impossible for me to prove my love to you." And Gide: "Everything in her behavior seemed to say: Since he no longer loves me, nothing matters to me. Now, I still loved her, and in fact I had never loved her so much; but it was no longer possible for me to prove it to her. That was much the worst thing of all."

Whence the importance of declarations; I want to keep wresting from the other the formula of his feeling, and I keep telling him, on my side, that I love him: nothing is left to suggestion, to divination: for a thing to be known, it must be spoken; but also, once it is spoken, even very provisionally, it is true.

So, excuse me guys, while I read more...