“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.

How terribly hard it is to accept that other people feel what we feel.

There is the boredom of other people’s needs, their feelings, their annoying habit of being right. “You broke the bathroom faucet, but I know you’ll find some way to blame me for it,” Neal said, correctly. *

you’re doing something existential and theologically significant.”

Remember this—how surprising and miraculous and startling grace feels.

the more you can reflect and reach out and somehow touch what you think this person is saying or validate it, that’s where that magic happens. That’s where they believe that they are loved.”

Each of us must live with a full measure of loneliness that is inescapable, and we must not destroy ourselves with our passion to escape this aloneness.

Marriage isn’t an achievement, the culmination of a love affair, but, rather, the announcement of an intention to live in a new way.

I love you so much I will never be able to listen to that Taylor Swift song again without feeling sad because you thought it reminded me of another man.