“They simply had very different notions of what ought to take up most space in life.”

“He tried to give his wife pleasure in little ways, because he had come to realize, after nearly two decades together, how often he disappointed her in the big things. It was never intentional. They simply had very different notions of what ought to take up most space in life.”

“We ought not to endeavor to revise history according to our latter day notions of what things ought to have been, or upon the theory that the past is simply a reflection of the present”

“But where do we come up with this notion of a woman in which the less space you take up, the more you're worth?”

“Everything in life had a purpose, and unless it achieved that purpose, it was just taking up space on the planet and wasting everybody's time.”

“Is not life exactly what it ought to be, in a certain sense? Isn't it only the naive who find all of this baffling? If you've a notion of what man's heart is, wouldn't you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a civilization is simply man's frantic and frightened attempt to hide himself from himself?”