‚The Story of Us‘ is about running into someone I had been in a relationship with at an awards show, and we were seated a few seats away from each other. I just wanted to say to him, ‚Is this killing you? Because it’s killing me.‘ But I didn’t. Because I couldn’t. Because we both had these silent shields up.

A pessimist? That’s a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.

I’m married to an Italian woman, and I used to love cooking Italian at home, because it’s one-pot cooking. But my wife does not approve of my Italian cooking.

Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can – that is their secret.

Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.

Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.

There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

In married life three is company and two none.

We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love.

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.

He who hath many friends hath none.

I rely on other people every day of my life.

We had problems like all families but we had a lot of love. I was extremely loved. We always felt we had each other.

When people need love and understanding and support the most is when they deserve it the least.

Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice.

I purposely don’t talk about money, because people are already skeptical about TV preachers. But I do say that I want you to be blessed. To me, prosperity is having health, having great children, having peace, good relationships. It’s not about the money.

Rejoicing in our joy, not suffering over our suffering, makes someone a friend.

People like to hear the word ‚love.‘

Before marriage, a girl has to make love to a man to hold him. After marriage, she has to hold him to make love to him.

There isn’t any formula or method. You learn to love by loving – by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.

A man has a tendency to accept you the way you are, while most women immediately start to pick flaws and want to change you.

A friend to all is a friend to none.

In the spring of 1936, I was introduced by friends to Jean Tatlock. In the autumn, I began to court her. We were at least twice close enough to marriage to think of ourselves as engaged.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

I really thought I was on the way out. My husband Blake saved my life. Often I don’t know what I do, then the next day the memory returns. And then I am engulfed in shame.

In all our contacts it is probably the sense of being really needed and wanted which gives us the greatest satisfaction and creates the most lasting bond.

It’s possible to love a human being if you don’t know them too well.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

Woman begins by resisting a man’s advances and ends by blocking his retreat.

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

Relationships are the hallmark of the mature person.

You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s.

It always seems odd to me that the fundamental laws of physics, when discovered, can appear in so many different forms that are not apparently identical at first, but, with a little mathematical fiddling, you can show the relationship.

Friendship is a plant of slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.

Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.

God is more interested in your future and your relationships than you are.

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

I have an urge to communicate. I think I’m a change from what it would be like dating a normal guy who doesn’t talk too much.

The death of my father is probably the biggest thing that I ever faced. Daddy and I were best friends.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.

The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love.

Women may fall when there’s no strength in men.

My wife told me if there is any rumors about me, it better be about politics and not about my social life.

We’re so immaturely cynical as a culture. We’re not wise enough to look at an institution like marriage and to really things about what it means and what it signifies. It signifies a place where people can tie the ropes of their lives together so that they’re stronger. It signifies a place where people can tell the truth to one another.

You can close more business in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you.

My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.

Regarding marriage, it – somehow, it didn’t happen. One fellow in such a big family not getting married is not an issue.

Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.

Not cohabitation but consensus constitutes marriage.

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

Love begins by taking care of the closest ones – the ones at home.

Few are drawn to the person whom others avoid and neglect; people gather around those who have already attracted interest.

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

When women kiss it always reminds one of prize fighters shaking hands.

Crankiness is at the essence of all comedy. My wife and I were discussing the different types of cranky. There’s entertaining cranky, annoying cranky, angry cranky.

When I say I’m going to take care of a woman, I don’t just mean physically or sexually or romantically. I’m going to take care of her emotionally and spiritually. I’m going to take care of her in all ways. I take a lot of pride in that today.

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.