“Loving means knowing how to listen, being there, knowing how to prioritize, the attentions. To love means to complete each other.”

“Love doesn't mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness.”

“Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”

“me: you know what sucks about love?
o. w. g.: what?
me: that it's so tied to the truth.

I know it sucks, but in a way, it's good…. Love and truth being tied together, I mean. They make each other possible, you know?”

“But many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”

“Paul asks how I would have handled a love letter from a student. I don't know — by talking, maybe, by listening. I don't know.
How sad that we don't hear each other — any of us.
Major issues are submerged by minor ones; catastrophes by absurdities.”

“All of us are infected today with an extraordinary egoism. And that is not freedom; freedom means learning to demand only of oneself, not of life and others, and knowing how to give: sacrifice in the name of love.”

“Do not undervalue attention. It means interest and also love. To know, to do, to discover, or to create you must give your heart to it – which means attention. All the blessings flow from it.”

“How they loved each other, these three, how they had suffered for each another, and yet how much joy they clearly took from simply being in the same room.”

“Impossible to love
Is all that I know how to be
But in my heart
I keep repeating
You didn't mean to hate me I still love my enemy.”