“You have to shrink yourself to fit into this little life with him.”

“Does he make you happy?""Sure", I said.He told me I didn't know what real happiness was. "You have to shrink yourself to fit into this little life with him.”

“But then you hear that he can't hear you, you see that he can't see you. You are not here - and you haven't died yet. You see yourself through his eyes, as The Generic Woman, the skirted symbol on the ladies' room door. When he says, "I love you, honey," you realize that he never call you by your name. You will say good-bye for all the right reasons. You're tired of living in wait for his apocalypse. You have your own fight on your hands, and though it's no bigger or noble than his, it will require all your energy. It's you who has to hold on to earth. You have to tighten your grip - which means letting go of him.”

“He went to the bar and stood there a while. But he was in the way of people getting their drinks. He moved to the edge of the crowd and just watched. Suddenly it seemed, he was drunk, in a suit that didn't fit, at a party where he didn't know anyone, and he was standing alone.”

“You are making it harder than it has to be," she says.I say, "And should I forgive him because it would be easier?""You don't nee a reason to forgive," she says. "If you want to go on with someone, that is what you do.”

“Something changed then. I saw my life in scale: it was just my life. It was not momentous, and only now did I recognize that it had once seemed so to me; that was while my father was watching.I saw myself the way I'd seen the cleaning women in the building across the street. I was just one person in one window. Nobody was watching, except me.”

“I tried to go back and talk about what I did know. I told her about one girl he'd brought home from Cornell; I'd asked if she was his girlfriend, and he's said, "When you define something, you limit it.”