I think people want to get married to end their emotional uncertainty. In a way, they want to end powerful feelings, or certainly the negative ones.

Happiness is impossible for longer than 15 minutes. We are the descendants of creatures who, above all else, worried.

In a secularising world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.

The more familiar two people become, the more the language they speak together departs from that of the ordinary, dictionary-defined discourse. Familiarity creates a new language, an in-house language of intimacy that carries reference to the story the two lovers are weaving together and that cannot be readily understood by others.

Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.

The telephone becomes an instrument of torture in the demonic hands of a beloved who doesn't call.

I am conscious of trying to stretch the boundaries of non-fiction writing. It's always surprised me how little attention many non-fiction writers pay to the formal aspects of their work.