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 nothing more baffling in a human relationship than silence, the dark loom of doubts and questions unexpressed.

For a gallant spirit there can never be defeat.

There is a peacefulness, an air of reflection, about a rocking-chair that attaches to no other moving object.

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

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