“Life meant reducing expectations and making-do with what one had.”

“We were not having any fun, he had recently begun pointing out. I would take exception (didn't we do this, didn't we do that) but I had also known what he meant. He meant doing things not because we were expected to do them or had always done them or should do them but because we wanted to do them. He meant wanting. He meant living.”

“Do what makes you happy. Life is too short to live on other people's expectations”

“Well, he thought, one did what one had to do, so life went. No, one did what one had to do in order to do what one wanted to do - so life really went.”

“But life wasn't a fairy tale, and I had no problem doing what was necessary to get what I wanted, even if it meant playing dirty.”

“A good marriage, like any partnership, meant subordinating one's own needs to that of the other's, in the expectation that the other will do the same.”