library is a beautiful old thing

I think of modern marriage as a car strangely fashioned out of an old abandoned horse carriage, built upon the framework of a mule cart. All the original engineering is still there, underneath it all.

So sadness is a place?' Giovanni asked. 'Sometimes people live there for years,'I said.

Attraversiamo (meaning "Lets cross over" in Italian)

The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind will ever find peace is inside the silence of the heart. That's where you need to go.

Men go into marriage with virtually no expectations whatsoever. Ten years later, the men are delightfully surprised to find out that it's actually kind of nice, and the women have sort of had to take a nose dive from what they thought it was going to be.

There is no choice more intensely personal, after all, than whom you choose to marry; that choice tells us, to a large extent, who you are.