None of us lives his life alone.  Those who try are foredoomed; they disintegrate as human beings. Some aspects of life experiences are, to be sure, more individual than social, others are more social than individual; but life is nonetheless a shared and a sharing experience.  In the early years this sharing occurs almost exclusively with members of our family.  The family is the basic unit of growth and experience, fulfillment or failure. It is also the basic unit of illness and health.      

~Nathan W. Ackerman, The Psychodynamics of Family life, Chapter 1.

Any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting and significant than any romance, however passionate.

~W. H. Auden

The great secret to successful marriage is to treat all disasters as incidents and none of the incidents as disasters.

~Harold Nicholson