Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness, and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was time when they both loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other moral trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore.

Perhaps this is what the stories meant when they called somebody heartsick. Your heart and your stomach and your whole insides felt empty and hollow and aching.

It's much more important to write than to be written about.

The truth is that the first changes are so slow they pass almost unnoticed, and you go on seeing yourself as you always were, from the inside, but others observe you from the outside.

I have learned that a man has the right and obligation to look down at another man, only when that man needs help to get up from the ground.

Once again she shuddered with the evidence that time was not passing, as she had just admitted, but that it was turning in a circle.

I would not have traded the delights of my suffering for anything in the world.