The trumped-up charges against kitsch and sentimentality should disturb us and make us suspicious.

We also confuse trust with familiarity.

For all of the advice in the magazines on "How to Keep your Love Alive," the salvation of love is not the prolongation of sexual desire but the shared lifelong cultivation of a romantic lightheartedness that softens conflicts and anxieties and focuses serious attention even as it undermines seriousness as such. It's hard to fall out of love so long as you're laughing together.

Building trust begins with an appreciation and understanding of trust, but it also requires practice and practices.

Trust is not bound up with knowledge so much as it is with freedom, the openness to the unknown.

Trust is a skill learned over time so that, like a well-trained athlete, one makes the right moves, usually without much reflection.

Trust opens up new and unimagined possibilities.