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

I went nearly 30 years without being able to really seriously entertain marriage or a family. In fact, the word 'marriage' would actually give me a shake when it was brought up.

I think the institute of marriage is a noble thing. The idea of a partner for life is incredibly romantic. But now we're living to 100. A hundred years ago people were dying at age 37. Til death do us part was a much different deal.

I never thought I'd spend all my life with Gary. I suppose I was quite cynical about marriage. But with Jude, I knew right from the beginning: there was an electricity I'd never felt before. It was so easy, we talked for hours. It was a relief, really.

I guess because the shows were activist in their own way - the marriage of my public activism and my career activism, you know - people understand me very well. They also understand there's a very strong bipartisan part in all of this.

I honestly believe you can never tell if a relationship is going to last. In my own marriage, which is going on 14 years, I don't think of it as 'I'm going to be with this person forever.' Instead, I think of more like, 'I'll probably be with this person for the next six weeks. Then I'll re-evaluate.'

The Southern slave would obey God in respect to marriage, and also to the reading and studying of His word. But this, as we have seen, is forbidden him.

I don't know why, but the older I get the more interested I get in my parents' marriage. And it's interesting to be married yourself, too, because there is an inevitable comparison.

My parents had an arranged marriage, as did so many other people when I was growing up. My father came and had a life in the United States one way and my mother had a different one, and I was very aware of those things. I continue to wonder about it, and I will continue to write about it.

I am fairly classless because it is very difficult to class someone who comes from a mixed marriage.