We are often insane with happiness. We are also very unhappy for reasons neither of us can do anything about. Like being separated.

What is more basic than the need to be known? It is the entirety of intimacy, the elixir of love, this knowing.

What we need,' Henry says, 'is a fresh start. A blank slate. Let's call her Tabula Rasa.

When you live with a woman you learn something every day. So far I have learned that long hair will clog up the shower drain befor you can say "Liquid-Plumr"; that it is not advisable to clip something out of the newspaper before your wife has read it, even if the newspaper in question is a week old; that I am the only person in our two-person household who can eat the same thing for dinner three nights in a row without pouting; and that headphones were invented to preserve spouses from each other's musical excesses.

absence can be present, like a damaged nerve, like a dark bird

Time passes and the pain begins to roll in and out as though it’s a woman standing at an ironing board, passing the iron back and forth, back and forth across a white tablecloth.

I keep myself busy. Time goes faster that way.