14
" Nora's walk to work was a kind of labor of love, too, of that love for the city that occasionally wavered or dimmed but had never gone away. She tended to see always the same people, the Sikh bicyclist with his two small children in a seat on the back, the man who ran while nonchalantly juggling three fluorescent green tennis balls. It was as though they all knew one another without knowing anything about one another, so that if for a week or two Tennis Ball Man did not appear Nora would find herself wondering if he was on vacation, or had moved to another neighborhood, or something worse, a broken hip , a heart attack. "
― Anna Quindlen , Alternate Side
18
" When people divorced, she was often surprised, and when they stayed together, sometimes more so. She thought that people sought marriage because it meant they could put aside the mascara, the bravado, the good clothes, the company manners, and be themselves, whatever that was, not try so hard. But what that seemed to mean was that they didn't try at all. In the beginning they all spend so much time trying to know the other person, asking questions, telling stories, wanting to burrow beneath the skin. But then you married and naturally were supposed to know one another down to the ground, and so stopped asking, answering, listening. "
― Anna Quindlen , Alternate Side
