“He understood very well that it was just because of this intimacy that their marriage had not survived.”

“We had a happy marriage because we were together all the time. We were friends as well as husband and wife. We just had a good time.”

“. . .how he had loved Christine more than he had understood, that sometimes one forgot what it meant, really, to love, the way the tide of a marriage advances and retreats, . .”

“The Silly Putty-like malleability of the institution [marriage], in fact, is the only reason we still have the thing at all. Very few people... would accept marriage on it's thirteenth-century terms. Marriage survives, in other words, precisely because it evolves. (Though I suppose this would not be a very persuasive argument to those who probably also don't believe in evolution).”

“Weston did not know the Malacandrian word for laugh: indeed, it was not a word he understood very well in any language.”

“It is very important to pray and work more during your life's stage of sensation and experience. Intimacy well-handed is power and fame well-established.”