Traits don't change, states of mind do.

The key to contentment was to never ask why; she had learned that long ago.

Traits don't change, states of mind do.

But after a certain point in a marriage, you stopped having a certain kind of fight, Olive thought, because when the years behind you were more than the years in front of you, things were different.

The facts didn't matter. Their stories mattered, and each of their stories belonged to each of them alone.

You surely know that in the course of a long marriage it is not unusual for a husband or a wife to develop a crush on someone else.

She remembered was hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life the way the boats plowed the shiny water, the way the plane was plowing forward to a place new, and where she was needed.