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.

Fortunately for the human race, pain, however piercing, is not a lasting emotion. The recollection of happiness lingers, but the consciousness never retains for long the first thrust of tragic loss. The details of daily life crowd in upon the mind.

I hate this place. I shall hate it to my grave.

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.

You have no idea how hard it is to live out a great romance.

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

You can never be too rich or too thin.