“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even 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. To love is to be vulnerable.”
More from C. S. Lewis
“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art....It has no survival value; rather…”
“We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually; we need them if we are to know…”
“Did you ever know, dear, how much you took away with you when you left?”
“Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard…”