Love does not move us to laughter at the deepest point in its journey, the pinnacle of its flight: at its deepest and highest, it wrenches from us cries and moans, expressions of pain, however jubilant, which when you think about it is not strange at all because birth is a painful joy.

A little death is what the French call the climax of the embrace, which joins us as it breaks us apart and finds us as it loses us, is our beginning as it is our end. A little death they call it, but it must be great, tremendous, to give birth to us as it kills us.

~ Eduardo Galeano, The Book of Embraces (translated by Cedric Belfrage)

Eduardo Galeano

No nos da risa el amor cuando llega a lo más hondo de su viaje, a lo más alto de su vuelo: en lo más hondo, en lo más alto, nos arranca gemidos y quejidos, voces de dolor, aunque sea jubiloso dolor, lo que pensándolo bien nada tiene de raro, porque nacer es una alegría que duele.

Pequeña muerte, llaman en Francia a la culminación del abrazo, que rompiéndonos nos junta y perdiéndonos nos encuentra y acabándonos nos empieza. Pequeña muerte, la llaman; pero grande, muy grande ha de ser, si matándonos nos nace.

~ Eduardo Galeano – El libro de los abrazos

Eduardo Galeano is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His best known works are Memoria del fuego (Memory of Fire Trilogy, 1986) and Las venas abiertas de América Latina (Open Veins of Latin America, 1971) which have been translated into 20 languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis, and history. (Source: Wikipedia).