I am openly prideful, secretly judgemental, and cowardly in conflict.

You can measure the happiness of a marriage by the number of scars that each partner carries on their tongues, earned from years of biting back angry words.

To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow - this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.

Maybe the difference between first marriage and second marriage is that the second time at least you know you are gambling.

Sometimes life is too hard to be alone, and sometimes life is too good to be alone.

Marriage becomes hard work once you have poured the entirety of your life’s expectations for happiness into the hands of one mere person. Keeping that going is hard work.

The problem, simply put, is that we cannot choose everything simultaneously. So we live in danger of becoming paralyzed by indecision, terrified that every choice might be the wrong choice.

Every intimacy carries secreted somewhere below its initial lovely surfaces, the ever-coiled makings of complete catastrophe.

I was a veritable Johnny Appleseed of grand expectations, and all I reaped for my trouble was a harvest of bitter fruit.

the great lack of parity between husbands and wives has always been spawned by the disproportionate degree of self-sacrifice that women are willing to make on behalf of those they love.

By unnerving definition, anything that the heart has chosen for its own mysterious reasons it can always unchoose later—again, for its own mysterious reasons.

Privilege is when you contribute to the oppression of others and then claim that you are the one being discriminated against.

If you don't understand the details of your business you are going to fail.

Like every mother, my wish - every birthday - is for my children to stay healthy (and) for my family to remain healthy.

PLOT is CHARACTER revealed by ACTION.

you don't deal with time. Time deals with you.

Humility is often only feigned submission which people use to render others submissive. It is a subterfuge of pride which lowers itself in order to rise.

I think camping is one of those things where if you're forced into it as a child, you'll probably hate it as an adult.

Charisma is the gift from above where a leader knows from inside himself what to do.

My mother used to tell me when I went somewhere, "Please leave your foolishness at home." But how could I do that? It was stuck on me.

It's a writer's job to carve with language, to hew close to the bone.