His love for me seemed to overflow my limits by its flood of wealth and service. But my necessity was more for giving than foe receiving; for love is a vagabond, who can make his flowers bloom in the wayside dust, better than in the crystal jars kept in the drawing-room.

The whole world seems tilted, my inner ear displaced by a hole where my spouse used to be.

Soon I was weeping---for the reservists who put their entire lives on hold when called to duty, for the military mothers who had to keep their families together all alone, for the parents, spouses, sons, and daughters who were beset with worry, for Mike, and for the soldiers who would never come home. I only meant to buy a shower curtain, and now, quite unexpectedly, right when I least wanted it, months of pent-up loneliness, fear, and frustration were pouring out in an endless churn of hot, silent tears.

I would have you come into the heart of the outer world and meet reality. Merely going on with your household duties, living your life in the world of household conventions and the drudgery of household tasks - you were not made for that! If we meet, and recognize each other, in the real world, then only will our love be true.

If you truly loved someone you won't become their enemy. You will become their guardian angel.

Some people would not have remained with their partners, if the unfortunate things that have happened to them had happened to their partners, or if the fortunate things that have happened to their partners had happened to them.

I tend to interpret that whole 'everyone's wife is a Mossad agent' thing in a more sort of metaphorical way--that people you're intimate with might be, like, 'double agents,' y'know? It's a weird kind of paranoia you get about people you love--that they might turn out to be completely different from who you think they are, that it's all been some sort of diabolically patient plot against you. I think that's a pretty normal fear you have in any serious relationship. And that's why it's such a popular part of the epic, because so many people can relate to that fear. But personally, I don't really worry about it too much.

In some cases, it is the woman’s stomach—not her heart—that has left her man for another.

He regarded marriage as an arbitrary and essentially adversarial relationship, akin to the yoking of prisoners on the chain gang.

We treat our stone wives with much more care than they treat their warm ones, anyway. I personally dust mine once a week, and I know Khaamil gives them presents when I am not looking. These are yours - they are in your care, and you must be faithful.