The real essence of any marriage that has struggled, however unsuccessfully, towards happiness, lies in the growth of a wordless understanding that what is acceptable to one partner will be acceptable to the other.

A woman's life can really be a succession of lives, each revolving around some emotionally compelling situation or challenge, and each marked off by some intense experience.

There can be no summary and dramatic end to a marriage - only a slow and painful unravelling of a tangled skein of threads too stubborn to be broken.

I look a hundred and weigh 110 - you won't love me when you see the wreck England has made me.

All this was mine; but I was a long time learning that wisdom and experience are things apart; that to taste life is not to be confused with understanding what life is really all about. The shared experiences, the wisdom so freely proffered by others, in words and in example, rarely swayed me for long. Came another day and the import was gone, and only the echo of the laughter remained. Experience was a revolving sun in the warmth of which I was content to bask.

A marriage, even one that goes awry, generates claims and needs that persist like an afterglow long after the emotional fire is burned out.

I'm not a beautiful woman. I'm nothing to look at, so the only thing I can do is dress better than anyone else.