Chekhov on Marriage

Here's an incisive quote from Anton Chekhov as related in Alphabet Juice by Roy Blount, Jr.

Very well, then, I shall marry . . . But under the following conditions: everything must continue as it was before, in other words, she must live in Moscow and I in the country, and I'll go visit her. I will never be able to stand the sort of happiness that lasts from one day to the next, from one morning to the next. Whenever someone talks to me day after day about the same thing in the same tone of voice, it brings out the ferocity in me . . . I promise to be a splendid husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, does not appear in my sky every day. I won't write any better for having gotten married.

Don't show this to The Woman!