not new, but well put

From Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer:

I don't love you he told her one evening as they lay naked in the grass.

She kissed his brow and said. I know that. And I'm sure you know that I don't love you.

Of course, he said, although it came as a great surprise -- not that she didn't love him, but that she would say it. In the past seven years of love-making he had heard the words so many times: from the mouths of widows and children, from prostitutes, family friends, travelers, and adulterous wives. Women had said I love you without his ever speaking. The more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. It surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say I love you