Count your horror stories of attempted trust. Recollect. We then compare and decide we’ve equally been outdone by strangers we’ll never see again. Afterwards, mutual disinterest is the universal result; the only exceptions proving the rule: love takes a little distrust of self.

I can love you because I want to feel less alone, or I can love you because I want you to feel less alone. But only the latter requires me to imagine a consciousness independent of my own, and equally real.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/magazine/why-write-novels-at-all.html?pagewanted=2&_r=4&ref=books