Let us hope, I prayed, that a kind Providence will put a speedy end to the acts of God under which we have been laboring.

When I can no longer bear to think of the victims of broken homes, I begin to think of the victims of intact ones.

You can make a sordid thing sound like a brilliant drawing-room comedy. Probably a fear we have of facing up to the real issues. Could you say we were guilty of Noel Cowardice?

... it is a fact universally acknowledged that a husband is the most ridiculous thing on earth, except for a bachelor.

He resented such questions as people do who have thought a great deal about them. The superficial and slipshod have ready answers, but those looking this complex life straight in the eye acquire a wealth of perception so composed of delicately balanced contradictions that they dread, or resent, the call to couch any part of it in a bland generalization. The vanity (if not outrage) of trying to cage this dance of atoms in a single definition may give the weariness of age with the cry of youth for answers the appearance of boredom.

The difficulty with marriage is that we fall in love with a personality, but must live with a character.

Pain is the question mark turned like a fishhook in the human heart.