Faith is one of only two things in mankind's consciousness that defies discussion. The other is one's marriage.

If you behave in a manner that poisons your relationship, don__ be surprised when it dies.

There is no such thing as escape after all, only an exchange of one set of difficulties for another. It wasn't Mark or the farm or marriage I was trying to shake loose from but my own imperfect self, and even if I kept moving, she would dog me all the way around the world, forever.

...[A] certain degree of un-understanding (not mis-, but un-) is the only possible sanctuary which one human being can offer to another in the midst of the devastating intimacy of a happy marriage.

My parents have been married forty-two years. I wonder how many of those were happy.

He was angry; not as the irritable, from chafing of a trifle; nor was his anger like the fool's, pumped from the wells of nothing, to be dissipated by a reproach or a curse; it was the wrath peculiar to ardent natures rudely awakened by the sudden annihilation of a hope --dream, if you will-- in which the choicest happinesses were thought to be certainly in reach. In such case nothing intermediate will carry off the passion --the quarrel is with Fate.