When she realizes that Nigel is having an affair, her first sentiment is satisfaction that she figured it out. Her second is that, despite all the palaver about betrayal, it doesn't feel so terrible.This is pleasing--it demonstrates a certain sophistication. She wonders if his fling might even serve her. In principle, she could leave him without compunction now, though she doesn't wish to. It also frees her from guilt about any infidelities she might wish to engage in. All in all, his affair might prove useful.

Death never mattered at those times - in the early days I even used to pray for it: the shattering annihilation that would prevent for ever the getting up, the putting on of clothes, the wathchign her torch trail across to the opposite side of the common like the tail-light of a low car driving away.

It was more difficult not tounderstand than to understand.

She was as sated with him as he was tired of her. Emma had rediscovered in adultery all the banality of marriage.

Serious affairs and history are carefully laid snares for the uninformed.

She says it's really not very flattering to her that the women who fall in love with her husband are so uncommonly second-rate.

Mercifully one forgets one's love affairs as one forgets one's dreams.

That's the mark of true friends. That we might not see each other for a year but when we do it's as if we were never apart.

He should in humility have asked her why it was that he was naturally a cuckold, why two women of different temperaments and characters had been inspired to have lovers at his expense. He should be telling her, with the warmth of her body warming his, that his second wife had confessed to greater sexual pleasure when she remembered that she was deceiving him.

Was it necessary to tell me that you wanted nothing in the world but me?'The corners of his mouth drooped peevishly.Oh, my dear, it's rather hard to take quite literally the things a man says when he's in love with you.'Didn't you mean them?'At the moment.

Back at home, days later, feel cranky and tired. Sit on the couch and tell him he's stupid. That you bet he doesn't know who Coriolanus is. That since you moved in you've noticed he rarely reads. He will give you a hurt, hungry-to-learn look, with his James Cagney eyes. He will try to kiss you. Turn your head. Feel suffocated. (from How)

And I ask myself what it is about me that makes this wonderful, beautiful woman return. Is it because I'm pathetic, helpless in my current state, completely dependent on her? Or is it my sense of humour, my willingness to tease her, to joke my way into painful, secret places? Do I help her understand herself? Do I make her happy? Do I do something for her that her husband and son can't do? Has she fallen in love with me?As the days pass and I continue to heal, my body knitting itself back together, I begin to allow myself to think that she has.

I told my wife the truth. I told her I was seeing a psychiatrist. Then she told me the truth: that she was seeing a psychiatrist, two plumbers, and a bartender.

Don't leave a piece of jewelry at his house so you can go back and get it later he may be with his real girlfriend.

How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode.

I suspect that 'Kindness and Cruelty' and 'Mercy and Justice' all have secret affairs, as though they rendezvous only within certain sophisticated souls: those who hate being offensive, but love telling the truth.

Jealousy from a love affair is something even God can admit.

Do not keep control over household affairs. The one who keeps control has to wander around. The unusable money [torn notes, ruined coins] are offered as homage in prayer rituals! "Live' as a "friend' with the —wife'. You are her —friend' and she is your —friend'.