“Those doves below, the ones utterly cared for, never endangered ones, cannot know tenderness.”

“A theology that endangers life rather than "giving life" is one that cannot accept the title of being adequately Christian.”

“Indeed how can one care for those one has never seen?”

“On the eve of long voyages or an absence of many years, friends who are tenderly attached will seperate with the usual look, the usual pressure of the hand, planning one final interview for the morrow, while each well knows that it is but a poor feint to save the pain of uttering that one word, and the meeting will never be. Should possibilities be worse to bear than certainties?”

“You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.”

“A great deal of tenderness, but it was the tenderness of a hospice nurse - of one committed to caring but too familiar with pain and parting to every truly or fully invest.”