“Accepting all the good and bad about someone. It's a great thing to aspire to. The hard part is actually doing it.”

“Needing was so easy: it came naturally, like breathing. Being needed by someone else, though, that was the hard part. But as with giving help and accepting it, we had to do both to be made complete-like links overlapping to form a chain, or a lock finding the right key.”

“That was the thing. You never got used to it, the idea of someone being gone. Just when you think it's reconciled, accepted, someone points it out to you, and it just hits you all over again, that shocking.”

“That was the thing about being alone, in theory or in principle. Whatever happened-good, bad, or anywhere in between-it was always, if nothing else, all your own.”

“Maybe marriage, like life, isn't only about the big moments, whether they be good or bad. Maybe it's all the small things—like being guided slowly forward, surely, day after day—that stretches out to strengthen even the most tenuous bond.”

“Just when you think it's reconciled, accepted, someone points it out to you, and it just hits you all over again, that shocking.”

“Life isn't only about the big moments whether they be good or bad. Maybe it’s about the small things that stretch out to strengthen the most tenuous bound.”