People who boast of happy marriages are usually self-deceivers, if not actually liars. The human soul is not framed for continued proximity, and the result of this enforced neighborhood is often an appalling loneliness for which the rules of the game forbid assuagement. There is nothing like the bootless solitude of those who are caged together.

Being a real person oneself is a matter of setting up limits and drawing lines and saying no. I don't want to be a nebulous bit of ectoplasm straying around in other people's lives. That sort of vague sympathy with everybody precludes any real understanding of anybody. Real thoughts come out of silence. Curiosity is a kind of charity.