Of Desire, Fulfillment, Loss and Love

I came across this beautiful passage while reading Kiran Desai‘s The Inheritance of Loss.

Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself.

I like the way Desai tells a story in this book. Her way of asking searching questions is simultaneously joyful and melancholy.