Matthew Norman

“She technically apologized yesterday, but it was one of those married-people apologies, more of a tactical move than anything else, a way of moving on with things.”

“You look good," I tell my reflection. "Hot?" But this last part comes out with a question mark at the end. I've never been good at sales.”

“I have to speak carefully now because I have this strange habit of imitating British people without even realizing that I'm doing it.”

“Married silence is a specific kind of silence, typically one in which the woman goes mute while the man pretends as if it's perfectly normal that she hasn't spoken in hours.”

“If my penis were a writer/director, it would be Woody Allen - small, neurotic, and, frankly, hit or miss.”

“This house has endured three of my Dad's four wives, and so over the last few decades it's been a home-size mood ring, changing to the styles and temperaments of its female inhabitants.”

“She rarely lets me off the hook, holding me to a different standard of emotional intelligence than the other men in her life - even my Brothers. She allows them to behave like Gary, docilely going about their lives, content and happy and completely oblivious to the sticky, ugly things just a few inches below the surface of everything.”

“I've been thinking about your Father a lot lately, and I've realized something. I married Gary specifically for the fact that he wasn't Curtis. If your Father has an opposite, it's Gary. I just need to decide if I want to spend the rest of my life with someone I married by default.”

“I don't think -" I begin, but then I stop there. Strangely enough, this sounds like a full, declarative sentence, as if I'm standing in a bar shouting out one of my most obvious character flaws. I don't think!”

“Anna is the sort of woman who writers write about, Tom. Somewhere in the third act, women like her save characters like you and me from ourselves. She's the loveliest literary device in the world.”

“Whoa," I say. "Look how tall he is." "Actors are always midgets in person," says Brandon, "But writers...they're giants.”

“That's me, giving myself a tough-love speech. I'm going to start doing that more often, I've decided. One might as well put his inner monologue to good use.”

“Then we lapse into silence. It's these silences that do damage, that reveal glimpses of the distressed foundation struggling under the weight of things.”

“The most important people in this man's life - the people who have mattered to him most - aren't my Mother or his wives or me or Anna or Allie. The people who matter most are the people in his head. That is loneliness.”

“Sonya's a real person, like your Mother. Thirty years ago, that was your Mother's biggest flaw in my eyes, and now that's the thing I love most about Sonya. It's funny how things end, isn't it?”

“I instantly like people who laugh at my jokes. It's a weakness of mine.”

“When you're having sex again, it makes you wonder why you weren't before. What could possibly have been bad enough to make you stop doing THAT?”

“I think you'll be a great teacher," said Gary. That's his role in my life: blind encourager and ambassador of false senses of security.”

“Power means never having to say you're sorry.”