But I still wanted to believe what lovers believe: that the thing itself is better than any alternative, be it unrequited, or defeated, or insane.  I wanted to cling to the image of love as the blending of spirits, as mÈlange, as the triumph of the impure, mongrel, conjoining best of us over what there is in us of the solitary, the isolated, the austere, the dogmatic, the pure; of love as democracy, as the victory of the no-man-is-an-island, two’s-company Many over the clean, mean, apartheiding Ones.  I tried to see lovelessness as arrogance, for who but the loveless could believe themselves complete, all-seeing, all-wise?  To love is to lose omnipotence and omniscience.  Ignorantly is how we all fall in love; for it is a kind of fall.  Closing our eyes, we leap from that cliff in hope of a soft landing.  Nor is it always soft; but still, I told myself, still, without that leap nobody comes to life.  The leap itself is a birth, even when it ends in death… (p. 289)

i’m not sure i agree with all of it, but it is a lovely passage, especially the last part.