“The coffee was cold The dinner was over, and it was late. When they went up the stairs, he asked her gently if she would like to sleep in her own room.
“Whatever for?”
“You must be tired from the trip.”
“You’re my husband.”
”
A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
I reread this moment in the book several times and enjoyed what seemed like a positive shift in the relationship between Catherine and Ralph.
“I would have given up all my privileges. Even a silent role would have made me happy. I would have been only too willing to be a wounded victim on a stretcher, a dead soldier. I was not given the opportunity. I had met my true judges, my contemporaries, my peers, and their indifference condemned me. I could not get over discovering myself through them: neither a wonder nor a jelly-fish. Just a little shrimp in whom no one was interested.”
“With a secret like that, at some point the secret itself becomes irrelevant. The fact that you kept it does not.”
“In the great electoral contest of life he is running for martyr, and you are helping him. He has his depth and certainty of belief. Where’s yours?”
“They have a certainty and depth of belief but they buy it at the price of a joyless, know-nothing attitude toward life. All they ask of God is a kind of spiritual Minimum Wage and in return they are ready to give up the sweets of life - which God also made, let me remind you.”
“Marriage is a game for adult players, and the rules in every marriage are different.”
