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

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.

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

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

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.

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