I picked this book up because it looked like a light, fun read--and it was. But it also has some lovely and insightful passages which add so much to the book, ensuring I'll reread it.

When Steve reflects on his courtship and marriage with Kristen:

Yet somehow they'd come together. Come together and started weaving a life, sharing the same page. In your twenties, you unquestioningly believe you're writing in pencil, a striking first draft. You do things with such confidence. You know you're so strong, so individual, wholly unique: that you have power over heaven and earth, and that the future and its wonders are either already in your hands or will be after you do the next thing, or the thing that follows naturally after that.
And so you bravely pick up the existential pencil and sketch a few opening sentences, the speculative first paragraph. You encourage the woman or man you love to write alongside you, relishing the co-authoring of this huge improvisational adventure, this big and beautiful game. You write and write and write and it all seems so very easy, and before you know it you're already on Chapter Sixteen and that's great because just look how much you've done and how very good it is ... or will be, definitely, when you've had a chance to give it an edit.
Until the lunch in Los Gatos when you realize there will be no second draft, that your wife doesn't love you any more, and you've been writing with indelible ink all along.