Bob Schwartz

Consider the gift you give to the one you love as the last one you will give.

What does it say?

“Even such a brief précis of the work that has been done on gift exchange should make it clear that we still lack a comprehensive theory of gifts….I touch on many issues, but I pass over many others in silence. With two or three brief exceptions I do not, for example, take up the negative side of gift exchange—gifts that leave an oppressive sense of obligation, gifts that manipulate or humiliate, gifts that establish and maintain hierarchies, and so forth and so on….I am not concerned with gifts given in spite or fear, nor those gifts we accept out of servility or obligation; my concern is the gift we long for, the gift that, when it comes, speaks commandingly to the soul and irresistibly moves us.”
Lewis Hyde, The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World