For me the postmodern attitude is that of a man who loves a woman who is intelligent and well-read: He knows that she knows that he cannot tell her, “I love you desperately”, because he knows (and she knows that he knows) that that is a line out of Barbara Cartland. Yet there is a solution. He can say: “As Barbara Cartland would say: I love you desperately.”
Umberto Eco 1983