Love of music, of sunsets and sea; a liking for the same kind of people; political opinions that are not radically divergent; a similar stance as we look at the stars and think of the marvelous strangeness of the universe - these are what build a marriage. And it is never to be taken for granted.

L’Engle frames marriage less as a single overwhelming passion than as an accumulation of shared attentions: aesthetic pleasures (music, sunsets, the sea), compatible social worlds, and broadly aligned civic values. The image of two people looking at the stars underscores a spiritual-intellectual companionship—an agreement not on every detail, but on a posture of wonder toward reality. The closing warning, “never to be taken for granted,” shifts the quote from description to ethic: these affinities must be continually noticed and renewed. Marriage, in this view, is built and maintained through ongoing gratitude and deliberate care rather than assumed permanence.