"To
love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly
be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact,
you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully
round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up
safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe,
dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will
become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or
at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven
where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love
is Hell."
~ Clive Staples Lewis