“Love is ordinary, love is dull, love is the natural condition of the human heart, love is the message we carry branded on us from the womb but only the best of us will dare to read it and, even when we dare to read it to people who can never understand, it is still there in us like the rings in a tree or the ridges in a shell, part of us, marking the years and the drought and the growth, even if nobody sees it until the tree is cut down.”

“When our heart is closed, it creates a lonely and isolated feeling. It prevents us from seeing the love that surrounds us all the time. It is when we begin to open our heart that we discover a feeling of oneness in love with other people, with nature, with the trees, with the stones, with the ocean and with the blue sky.”

“We appreciate the complicated and wonderful gifts you give us in each other. And we appreciate the task you put down before us, of loving each other the best we can, even as you love us.”

“Love is the most valuable gift we can give to another person. What we need to do is to open our heart and release our love to the world, to the people, to nature, to the animals, to the trees and to the sky – and this love will be returned a thousand times to us.”

“But love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice, or a dozen times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to stretch out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love where we find it, even if that means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness. The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us. And to save us.”

“..we need more love than we deserve...has God not indeed shown us his greatest love precisely when we deserved it least from the tree of Eden to the tree of Calvary and beyond?”