Long-standing togetherness writes permanent changes into a brain's open book. In a relationship, one mind revises another; one heart changes its part… - Thomas Lewis

Modern amorists are sometimes taken aback at the prospect of investing in a relationship with no guarantee of reward. It is precisely that absence, however, that separates gift from shrewdness. Love cannot be extracted, commanded, demanded, or wheedled. It can only be given.

If the attachment fabric of a civilization frays, if people cannot get from their relationships the emotional regulation that those bonds were designed to furnish, they will commandeer whatever means of limbic modulation they can lay hands on. Their hungering brains will seek satisfaction from a variety of ineffectual substitutes — alcohol, heroin, cocaine, and their cousins.

An ironic revelation of the television-computer age is that what people want from machines is humanity: stories, contact, and interaction.