“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart
will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure
of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to
an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries;
avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your
selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it
will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable,
impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to
the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven
where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations
of love is Hell.”
