Silence is pure. Silence is holy. It draws people together because only those who are comfortable with each other can sit without speaking. This is the great paradox.

Marriage is about compromise; it's about doing something for the other person, even when you don't want to.

Marriage is a partnership, not a democracy.

She was in a terrible marriage and she couldn't talk to anyone. He used to hit her, and in the beginning she told him that if it ever happened again, she would leave him. He swore that it wouldn't and she believed him. But it only got worse after that, like when his dinner was cold, or when she mentioned that she'd visited with one of the neighbors who was walking by with his dog. She just chatted with him, but that night, her husband threw her into a mirror.

That was the dirty secret associated with her past. Nor that she'd been abused but that somehow she felt that she deserved it because she'd let it happen. Even now, it shamed her, and there were times when she felt hideously ugly, as though the scars that had been left behind were visible to everyone.

What happens if a car comes? We die.

He fell asleep almost immediately but woke an hour later. Tiptoe-ing outside again, he went to check on the daughter he loved more than life itself.

You might not understand, but I gave you the best of me, and after you left, nothing was ever the same.

Who did she know in Raleigh who took the time off to fix a house? Or read Whitman or Eliot, finding images in the mind, thoughts of the spirit? Or hunted dawn from the bow of a canoe? These weren't the things that drove society, but she felt they shouldn't be treated as unimportant. They made living worthwhile.