Marriage is not a ritual or an end. It is a long, intricate, intimate dance together and nothing matters more than your own sense of balance and your choice of partner.

Instead of a trail of fire roaring through, hose people get small candles steadily lighting the way home until death do they part, and only the young are stupid enough to think that those two old people, him gimping, her squinting, are not in love.

We used to say, we’re no beauties, because it was impossible to tell the truth. In bed, we were beauties. We were goddesses. We were the little girls we’d never been: loved, saucy, delighted, and delightful.

Every couple has the same five arguments in their lifetime, which is really just the one, over and over, until people die or divorce. What it is depends on who you are and what your parents did to you.

We think- oh, we will never forget these northern lights, but we do. What we remember is only the curling picture in the left-hand drawer (Presque Isle, Maine, 1934) or a gorgeous half-page photo in an old travel magazine, but what we saw when we held hands, lifting our chins to the sky as if we could leap into the jagged, jeweled brilliance above us, was seen for ten seconds only, and never again.