“But loving someone isn't only making promises you know you can keep. That's just playing it safe. Where's the moral fiber in that? Loving someone is making promises you want to keep with all your heart, and then doing everything you can to make it happen, even if you fail sometimes. But the point is to try, because that's how you stretch yourself and learn you can do more than you thought you could. And maybe next time, you'll stretch a little farther.”

“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.”

“How can you make someone love you when they won't? How long are you supposed to keep trying?”

“Is it possible that the reasons you had for making that promise to yourself don't hold true anymore? Might it be the promise to yourself that's keeping you back, more than the reasons behind the promise? And if that's the case, you mustn't think of a promise to yourself in the same way as a promise to someone else. If you're changing your mind now, that's not wrong. What would be wrong would be to deny it or run away from it. I've sat up for too many nights with you not to know you've thought it all through. You have more courage than anyone else I know. But you're more stubborn, too. It would be hard for you to admit to yourself that it's time to change your mind.”

“The importance of falling in love lies not in how it feels, but in what it perceives. And as always with our feelings, the key moral issue is how truthful the perception is... Falling in love is a sign that this might be someone with whom you could make a good marriage. Still, it's not enough, because the feeling is not always as perceptive as it should be... So falling in love is not the basis for a good marriage. It's not even a requirement. Marriage does not depend on falling in love; it depends on the promises you make to each other in your wedding vows and then spend a lifetime keeping. As many people have pointed out, you can't promise how you'll feel. But you can promise to cultivate a virtue, such as the virtue of love.”

“When you find something that's whole, you do what you can to keep it that way. And when you fins something that isn't, then maybe it's not a bad idea to try to make it whole again. Maybe.”