The divorced person is like a man with a black patch over one eye: he looks rather dashing but the fact is that he has been through a maiming experience.

It is one of those quirks of human nature that you love the person whom you treat well, not necessarily the person who treats you well.

To live with the terrible truths about ourselves is the only way of not living them out. A need denied has infinitely more power than a need accepted.

If a man has a sense of identity that does not depend on being shored up by someone else, it cannot be eroded by someone else. If a woman has a sense of identity that does not depend on finding that identity in someone else, she cannot lose her identity in someone else. And so we return to the central fact: it is necessary to be.

There is no way of steering successfully between a failed situation and a failed self except by stopping and taking our bearings.

In order to plan your future wisely, it is necessary that you understand and appreciate your past.

If you defy the system long enough you'll be rewarded. At first life takes revenge and reduces you to a sniveling mess. But keep sniveling, have the madness, the audacity, to do what interests you, forget about your pension, and eventually life will say all right, we'll let you do it.