“[The modern age] knows nothing about isolation and nothing about silence. In our quietest and loneliest hour the automatic ice-maker in the refrigerator will cluck and drop an ice cube, the automat...”

“[Y]ou were too alert to the figurative possibilities of words not to see the phrase [angle of repose] as descriptive of human as well as detrital rest. As you said, it was too good for mere dirt; y...”

“There must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance ... some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which t...”

“What do you mean, 'Angle of Repose?' she asked me when I dreamed we were talking about Grandmother's life, and I said it was the angle at which a man or woman finally lies down. I suppose it is; an...”

“Hope was always out ahead of fact, possibility obscured the outlines of reality.”

“It's easier to die than to move ... at least for the Other Side you don't need trunks.”

“Chocolate says "I'm sorry" so much better than words.”

“An apology is the superglue of life! It can repair just about anything!!”

“IM SORRYI am developing a new board game. Its called Im Sorry. Its also a form of Self-Help Psychological Therapy!You take turns moving around the board like Monopoly. But if you land on a Yellow o...”

“I had no illusions about you,' he said. 'I knew you were silly and frivolous and empty-headed. But I loved you. I knew that your aims and ideals were vulgar and commonplace. But I loved you. I knew...”

“I'll have no husband, if you be not he.”

“It was the ring on the left hand that people at the Old Girls' Reunion looked for. Often, in fact nearly always, it was an uninteresting ring, sometimes no more than the plain gold band or the very...”

“You know it's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It's always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep t...”

“Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral. ”

“Men can be relentless," she agrees, "when they think a woman belongs to them.”