Since I started talking about V-Day, I might as well give a shout-out to two books I read as a senior in high school, but which I still think of as integral to my own idea of love. They are The Plague by Camus and The Art of Loving by Fromm. In both of them, the idea of attention and knowledge is drawn in contrast to the way the everyday world encourages humans to get wrapped up in minutiae. Fromm uses this quote by Paracelsus to introduce the book and I have always loved and remembered it.

He who knows nothing, loves nothing. He who can do nothing understands nothing. He who understands nothing is worthless. But he who understands also loves, notices, sees. ...The more knowledge is inherent in a thing, the greater the love. ...Anyone who imagines that all fruits ripen at the same time as the strawberries knows nothing about grapes.