“The problem in public life is learning to overcome terror; the problem in married life is learning to overcome boredom.”

“and taught him the only thing he had to learn about love: that nobody teaches life anything.”

“Together they had overcome the daily incomprehension, the instantaneous hatred, the reciprocal nastiness, and fabulous flashes of glory in the conjugal conspiracy. It was time when they both loved each other best, without hurry or excess, when both were most conscious of and grateful for their incredible victories over adversity. Life would still present them with other moral trials, of course, but that no longer mattered: they were on the other shore.”

“And nevertheless, when they watched him leave the house, this man they themselves had urged to conquer the world, then they were the ones left with the terror that he would never return. That was their life. Love, if it existed, was something separate: another life.”

“He was begining to defer his problems in the hope that death would resolve them .”

“The problem with marriage is that it ends every night after making love, and it must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast.”

“My most important problem was destroying the lines of demarcation that separate what seems real from what seems fantastic.”