“I soon realized I had made no mistake in my choice of a wife. I was helping her pack an overnight bag one afternoon when she said, ‘Put in some tooth twine.’ I knew then that a girl who called dental floss tooth twine was the girl for me. It had been a long search, but it was worth it.”

E. B. White

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“I’d get an idea and wouldn’t know how to make it work, and she’d figure out how to make it work.”

Pete Seeger

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“I feel, sometimes, like I have a map in my pocket that folds up, and I pull it out, and it’s bigger than the table, and there’s a thousand places to go with her.”

Tom Waits

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“…I’m extremely happy with her, and part of it has to do with the fact that she is at once completely familiar to me, so that I can be myself and she knows me very well and I trust her completely, but at the same time she is also a complete mystery to me in some ways. And there are times when we are lying in bed and I look over and sort of have a start. Because I realize here is this other person who is separate and different and has different memories and backgrounds and thoughts and feelings. It’s that tension between familiarity and mystery that makes for something strong, because, even as you build a life of trust and comfort and mutual support, you retain some sense of surprise or wonder about the other person.”

President Barack Obama

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“I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I’ve lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage. My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby.”

John Steinbeck

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“For marriage find somebody that was born near the time when you were born.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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“The joy of my life with Harry is coming home from a fancy dinner with Harry—and Harry always hates the dinner, whatever it is—and him making himself a marmalade on toast standing in the kitchen and him ranting, ‘How the hell could it have gone on as long as it did?’”

Tina Brown

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“I believe that I have a spiritual connection with my husband that is beyond any explanation. We are two absolutely totally different people that come from different backgrounds, different cultures, races, language, everything. And yet I feel him inside me. We won’t part, I know. I know positively that nothing will separate us. Ever. Because we’ve found something that is very spiritual and has nothing to do with being sick or in good health, young or not. Poor or rich. No. It works on another level. So, I’ve relaxed for the first time in my life and I don’t care about the tall blondes any more. The world is full of tall blondes.”

Isabel Allende

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“Now I am going to tell you the secret to a lasting marriage: Choose a spouse who needs to eat as often as you do. Bruce and I are like toddlers on a big day out. We need a snack, no matter where we are going or how long we are going to be gone. If we are headed out for dinner, we bring a Baggie of cut-up cheese for the car ride to the restaurant.”

Claire Dederer

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“Before marriage I was wildly interested in sex, but since joining up with my old goat, it has taken its proper position in my life.”

Julia Child

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“I’m married to my calling, but I’m not married to a particular woman. I have no pets. My apartment is full of books and records, the light of Toni Morrison and John Coltrane.”

Cornel West

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“Trophy wives are not longer bimbos, they are either women of distinction with careers in their own right, or they are efficient PAs who add bed to their job description, and are rewarded with a marriage ceremony.”

Fay Weldon

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“Bigotry has suffered a grievous blow.”

Eugene Robinson

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“You may depend upon it, that a slight contrast of character is very material to happiness in marriage.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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“If people were to bring their marriages in for a checkup on an annual basis, would that provide the same sort of benefit that a physical health checkup would provide?”

James V. Córdova

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