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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The quality of life in our world does not depend on the conflicts that arise, but on our response to them.

A true leader is a servant.

Character primarily is honesty with God, ones-self, and others."~R. Alan Woods [2013]

I don't think I've ever dared to write down what I see in the ruins of me, or tell in any detail the scars and all their secrets.

Choose your life's mate carefully. From this one decision will come 90 percent of all your happiness or misery.

There are never beginnings and endings in my work; everything just fits into place after a while.

There are those who spend their lives studying it and those who spend their lives doing it.

You go against yourself when you judge or blame yourself for anything

...the change was adjustment without improvement.

Hollywood is wonderful, but it does eat its young.