Quoting, like smoking, ... is a dirty habit to which I am devoted. But then ... I am a professor of English literature; it is an occupational hazard.

Upon becoming fifty the one thing you can't afford is habit.

The sign of a good marriage is that everything is debatable and challenged; nothing is turned into law or policy. The rules, if any, are known only to the two players, who seek no public trophies.

That is the point of quotations. One can use another's words to be insulting.

One hires lawyers as on hires plumbers, because one wants to keep one's hands off the beastly drains.

We women have lived too much with closure: "If he notices me, if I marry him, if I get into college, if I get this work accepted, if I get this job" -- there always seems to loom the possibility of something being over, settled, sweeping clear the way for contentment. This is the delusion of a passive life. When the hope for closure is abandoned, when there is an end to fantasy, adventure for women will begin.

I don't know why togetherness was ever held up as an ideal of marriage. Away from home for both, then together, that's much better.