ERICH SEGAL, 72

Classics professor, author of 'Love Story'

Erich Segal, a Yale University classics professor whose first novel, the weepy "Love Story," became a pop-culture phenomenon, selling more than 20 million copies in three dozen languages, died of a heart attack Sunday in London. "What can you say about a 25-year-old girl who died?" Mr. Segal wrote in the first line of the 1970 novel about star-crossed lovers, played in the blockbuster 1970 movie by Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal. The most famous line, uttered by the O'Neal character, came after he learns that Ms. McGraw's character is dying: "Love means never having to say you're sorry." The sentimental romance provoked floods of tears and turned its author into a sensation practically overnight.