“All the couples therapy and communication seminars in the world won't save you if you aren't prepared to close your eyes and hug the mainmast through a storm.”

“Dating is poetry. Marriage is a novel. There are times, maybe years, that are all exposition.”

“As married people, we dwell on a spectrum between happy and unhappy, in love and out of love, and we move back and forth on that line decade by decade, year by year, week by week, even hour by hour.”

“People who don't marry miss both the pelting hardships of marriage and its warm rewards.”

“I want to say that at various points in your marriage, may it last forever, you will look at this person and feel only rage.”

“Wherever you go, there you are. You would just have different problems. Are the problems you have now so bad that any other problems would be better?”

“(Personally, I have avoided many fights by going to bed angry and waking up to realize that I'd just been tired.)”

“To love somebody is not just a strong feeling -- it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise," writes psychologist Erich Fromm. "If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision?”

“The boring parts don't last forever. In retrospect, they aren't even boring.”

“Forsaking all others means going deep with one person -- exhaustingly deep.”

“...that's part of what marriage means: sometimes hating this other person but staying together because you promised you would.”