“The risk of love is loss and the price of loss is grief. But the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love”

“To love is to risk the pain of loss. But it’s a risk that’s worth taking.”

“Grief, regret, pain, and of course anger. Another loss. And when you compare this one loss to the hundreds and maybe thousands that occur people stop thinking they matter. It does matter though. Every loss matters.”

“I believe that courage is all too often mistakenly seen as the absence of fear. If you descend by rope from a cliff and are not fearful to some degree, you are either crazy or unaware. Courage is seeing your fear, in a realistic perspective, defining it, considering alternatives and choosing to function in spite of risks.”

“You can't have real pain without real love. You can't feel grief and loss and hurt without real love. Love is the only way you can ever be really hurt deep down.”

“Whenever we give our hearts in love, the burden of our vulnerability grows. We risk being rebuffed or embarrassed or inadequate. Beyond these things, we risk the enormous pain of loss. When those we love die, a part of us dies with them. When those we love are sick, in body or spirit, we too feel the pain. All of this is worth it. Especially the pain. If we insulate our hearts from suffering, we shall only subdue the very thing that makes life worth living. We cannot protect ourselves from loss. We can only protect ourselves from the death of love, we are left only with the aching hollow of regret, that haunting emptiness where love might have been.”

“Living was a dangerous past-time, and often quite painful—but there was also such joy in living, such beauty, things that one would otherwise never see, never experience, never know. The risk of pain and loss was a part of living.”