'This talk of love means very little. Love is not a feeling. It can be tested. Love is action, it is silence. It's not the emotional straining and scheming for possession that you used to think it was.'
This seemed to me very foolish talk. 'But love is concerned with possession,' I said. 'If you knew anything about unsatisfied love, you'd know this.'
'No,' said Anna strangely. 'Unsatisfied love is concerned with understanding. Only if it is all, all understanding, can it remain love while being unsatisfied.'

Iris Murdoch, Under The Net (Penguin Books, 1960) p. 40