...there is so much beauty in the trying, and in the failing, and in the trying again.

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.

So what's the secret to staying together?" I asked her. "Be nice?" she offered. I laughed, but that may be it, the way a secret to losing weight is to eat less. Be nice. Don't leave. That's all.

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.

The romantic fairy tales we grew up with -- where marriage is the happy ending rather than the opening scene -- are not useful for grown-ups.

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

...even good marriages sometimes involve flinging a remote control at the wall.

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

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.

Failure is part of being human, and it is definitely part of being married.

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

We were chosen by God’s to be His special possession.

My uncle was an Elvis impersonator - his name was Perry, and he went by 'Elvis Perry' - and my work as a wedding singer landed me a spot in his act.

Those nights lying alone are not discontinuous with this cold hectic dawn. It is who I am.

The Turks ... the Saudis, the Emiratis, etc. What were they doing?

Leadership is evoking in others the capacity to dream.

At times history and fate meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man's unending search for freedom.

What I do and who I am are two different things. And they always will be.

The Nobel Prize has given me, for the first time in my life, the feeling that my literature could be appreciated on an international level.

In the forest of primeval A school for Good and Evil Twin towers like two heads One for the pure And one for the wicked Try to escape you'll always fail, The only way out is Through a fairytale.

The humour of Dostoievsky is the humour of a barloafer who ties a kettle to a dog's tail.