Why do long marriages occasionally endow their inhabitants with a rare kind of equilibrium otherwise almost unknown in human relations? My guess is that the value of the moment has at last overshadowed the long history of resentments, betrayals, and boredom.

Only a marriage with partners strong enough to risk divorce is strong enough to avoid it.

a revolutionary marriage ... [is] one in which both partners have work at the center of their lives and must find a delicate balance that can support both together and each individually.

The compulsion to find a lover and husband in a single person has doomed more women to misery than any other illusion.

The sign of a good marriage is that everything is debatable and challenged; nothing is turned into law or policy. The rules, if any, are known only to the two players, who seek no public trophies.