“The promise, made when I am in love and because I am in love, to be true to the beloved as long as I live, commits me to being true even if I cease to be in love. A promise must be about things that I can do, about actions: no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way. He might as well promise to never have a headache or always to feel hungry.”

“Always' was a promise! How can you just break the promise?" "Sometimes people don't always understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said.Isaac shot me a look. "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway. Don't you believe in true love?"I didn't answer. I didn't have an answer.But I thought that if true love did exist, that was a pretty good definition of it.”

“I kept saying ‘always’ to her today, ‘always always always,’ and she j ust kept talking over me and not saying it back. It was like I wasalready gone, you know? ‘A lways’ was a promise! How can you j ust break the promise?”“Sometimes people don’t understand the promises they’re making when they make them,” I said.Isaac shot me a look. “Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That’s what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway.Don’t you believe in true love?”

“It was a promise she knew I might not be able to keep. But I made it anyway because I was going to find a way to make it true.”

“I promise to love and cherish you, to honor and sustain you, in sickness and in health, in poverty and in wealth,in the bad that may darken our days, in the good that may light our way. Tirzah, beloved, I promise to be true to you in all things until I die. And even beyond that, God willing”

“Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.”