Marriage is - among other things - a study in contradiction and disappointment, and inside that reality there is space for us to truly learn how to love.

I had long ago learned that when you are the giant, alien visitor to a remote and foreign culture it is sort of your job to become an object of ridicule. It’s the least you can do, really, as a polite guest.

This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.

What time has ever been a simple time for those who are living it?

Now imagine a life in which every day a person is presented with not two or even three but dozens of choices, and you can begin to grasp why the modern world has become, even with all its advantages, a neurosis-generating machine of the highest order.

Every word was a singing sparrow, a magic trick, a truffle for me. The words made me laugh in delight.

Every intimacy carries secreted somewhere below its initial lovely surfaces, the ever-coiled makings of complete catastrophe.