Modern romance, like Greek tragedy, celebrates the mystery of dismemberment, which is life in time. The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved.

Marriage . . . is not a love affair; it is an ordeal. (92)

The ultimate experience of love is a realization that beneath the illusion of two-ness dwells identity.

When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you're sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship.

It is within you that the divine lives.

Myth is the public dream, and dream is the private myth.