“An emptiness rules at its core, a rottenness, a silence when one of you retires to bed without saying good night, when you eat together without conversation, when the phone's passed wordlessly to the other. An emptiness when every night you lie in the double bed, restlessly awake, astounded at how closely hate can nudge against love, can wind around it sinuously like a cat. An emptiness when you realize that the loneliest you've ever been is within a marriage, as a wife.”

“An emptiness when you realize the loneliest you've ever been is within a marraige, as a wife”

“What do you think you’ve been doing to me, every day at work? Even before we were together, you teased me relentlessly. And then when we were together, when I knew exactly what I was missing each and every night when I went home to an empty bed, it was even worse.”

“I lay awake for hours in my twin bed next to the other, empty bed, feeling and hearing the spruces, the hemlocks, the rhododendron scraping at the partly open window, the verdant mountain out there in the night, the burgeoning of nature that did not seem to include me. And when, my restless body asked my teeming brain, had I agreed to be excluded?”

“Love can come when you're already who you are, when you're filled with you. Not when you look to someone else to fill the empty space.”

“You know when two people are right together when wanting the other person keeps you awake at night.”