To love at all is to be vulnerable.

Love anything, and your heart
will certainly be wrung
and possibly 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.

—C. S. Lewis