35 Insightful Divorce Quotes

Divorce can be a challenging and transformative experience, often accompanied by a whirlwind of emotions and new beginnings. During this time, finding solace and understanding through the wisdom of others can provide comfort and clarity. Quotes have a unique way of distilling complex emotions into simple, resonant insights that can help us navigate through life's transitions. In this collection, we've gathered 35 insightful divorce quotes that offer perspective, empathy, and inspiration. Whether you're seeking reassurance, encouragement, or just a resonant reminder that you're not alone, these quotes are here to accompany you on your journey toward healing and self-discovery.

1. “In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find and continue to find grounds for marriage.” - Robert Anderson

2. “What cracks had he left in their hearts? Did they love less now and settle for less in return, as they held onto parts of themselves they did not want to give and lose again? Or - and he wished this - did they love more fully because they had survived pain, so no longer feared it?” - Andre Dubus

3. “Those unexpected morality lessons provided by the trip had jolted me into some kind of action. It was time to jettison the past before the present jettisoned me. This was my first veiled attempt at recovery. Although perhaps I was just running away again. I returned to Glasgow, planning to say a final goodbye to Anne and get out of her life, but ended up drinking with buddies in the Chip Bar and never seeing her. I called her instead to say I was moving to London and told her she could have the house and everything else we owned, which wasn't much. I think she was as relieved as I was that I was leaving town for good.” - Craig Ferguson

4. “I am going insane. Yes. That is what´s happening. Good. Insane.” - Suzanne Finnamore

5. “I mentally bless and exonerate anyone who has kicked a chair out from beneath her or swallowed opium in large chunks. My mind has met their environment, here in the void. I understand perfectly.” - Suzanne Finnamore

6. “The abandonment came, and now this shabby bacchanal.” - Suzanne Finnamore

7. “He left a bit too easily and with obvious relief. His feet were swift and sure on the muddy path.” - Suzanne Finnamore

8. “Although I notice there is never a truly good time to have a nice long chat with one´s mother-in-law, unless you are having an extraordinary life and marriage and your mother-in-law is, say, Maureen Dowd, or Indira Gandhi. Someone of that ilk.” - Suzanne Finnamore

9. “I review what I know once again, confronting the monolith now alien and almost unconnected to me: my marriage.” - Suzanne Finnamore

10. “I remember one desolate Sunday night, wondering: Is this how I´m going to spend the rest of my life? Marrid to someone who is perpetually distracted and somewhat wistful, as though a marvelous party is going on in the next room, which but for me he could be attending?” - Suzanne Finnamore

11. “The snag about marriage is, it isn´t worth the divorce.” - Suzanne Finnamore

12. “Together we agree that there are few tableaus more pathetic than a woman poring over a plethora of self-help books, while in a small café across town her husband is sharing a bottle of Pouilly-Fuissé and fettucini Alfredo with a beautiful woman, fondling her fishnet knee and making careful plans to escape his life.” - Suzanne Finnamore

13. “I know my vision is impaired and cannot be trusted with even the simplest tasks, much less dating. Not that I´ve come within talon distance of a man.” - Suzanne Finnamore

14. “Seven of those days were pretty good. The eighth day was the bad one.” - Dennis Hopper

15. “The problem of unmet expectations in marriage is primarily a problem of stereotyping. Each and every human being on this planet is a unique person. Since marriage is inevitably a relationship between two unique people, no one marriage is going to be exactly like any other. Yet we tend to wed with explicit visions of what a “good” marriage ought to be like. Then we suffer enormously from trying to force the relationship to fit the stereotype and from the neurotic guilt and anger we experience when we fail to pull it off.” - M. Scott Peck

16. “But in the real world, you couldnt really just split a family down the middle, mom on one side, dad the other, with the child equally divided between. It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again. It was what you couldn't see, those tiniest of pieces, that were lost in the severing, and their absence kept everything from being complete.” - Sarah Dessen

17. “Darling Daddy,This is Rose.The shed needs new wires now it has blown up.Caddy is bringing home rock-bottom boyfriends to see if they will do for Mummy. Instead of you.Love, Rose.” - Hilary McKay

18. “My sudden, unforeseen capitulation had knocked me backward, and I had nothing to hold on to. My internal weather was eerily calm, as if in a tornado's aftermath, birdsong, sunshine, supersaturated colors, wreckage all around, and myself, dazed and limping.” - Kate Christensen

19. “From the photo albums, every single print of her had been peeled away. Shots of the both of us together had been cut, the parts with her neatly trimmed away, leaving my image behind. Photos of me alone or of mountains and rivers and deer and cats were left intact. Three albums rendered into a revised past. It was as if I'd been alone at birth, alone all my days, and would continue alone.” - Haruki Murakami

20. “Staying married may have long-term benefits. You can elicit much more sympathy from friends over a bad marriage than you ever can from a good divorce.” - P.J. O'Rourke

21. “She divorced her husband, y' know. I never knew him, it was before I met Jane. Apparently she came back from work one mornin' an' found her husband in bed with the milkman. With the milkman, honest to God. Well, apparently, from that day forward Jane was a feminist. An' I've noticed, she never takes milk in her tea.” - Willy Russell

22. “Marriage isn't a love affair. It isn't even a honeymoon. It's a job. A long hard job, at which both partners have to work, harder than they've worked at anything in their lives before. If it's a good marriage, it changes, it evolves, but it does on getting better. I've seen it with my own mother and father. But a bad marriage can dissolve in a welter of resentment and acrimony. I've seen that, too, in my own miserable and disastrous attempt at making another person happy. And it's never one person's fault. It's the sum total of a thousand little irritations, disagreements, idiotic details that in a sound alliance would simply be disregarded, or forgotten in the healing act of making love. Divorce isn't a cure, it's a surgical operation, even if there are no children to consider.” - Rosamunde Pilcher

23. “Maybe, in the final analysis, they saw me as something I wasn't and I tried to turn them into something they could never be. I loved them all but maybe I never understood any of them. I don't think they understood me.” - Ava Gardner

24. “A Plan B life can be just as good or better than a Plan A life. You just have to let go of that first dream and realize that God has already written the first chapter of the new life that awaits you. All you have to do is start reading!” - Shannon Alder

25. “The obvious effect of frivolous divorce will be frivolous marriage. If people can be separated for no reason they will feel it all the easier to be united for no reason.” - G.K. Chesterton

26. “Why did we divorce? I guess you could say we had trouble synchronizing. You know that carnival ride where two cages swing in opposite directions, going higher and higher until they go over the top? That was us. We passed each other all the time, but we never actually stopped in the same place until it was time to get off the ride.” - Diane Hammond

27. “When mom and dad went to war the only prisoners they took were the children” - PAT CONROY(AUTHOR)

28. “When you're corked...you're corked!” - Cheryl Nielsen

29. “Hold the bottle up to the light; you will see your dreams are always at the bottom.” - Rob Hutchison

30. “Certainly something had happened to me during the night. Or after months of tension I had arrived at the edge of some precipice and now I was falling, as in a dream slowly, even as I continued to hold the thermometer in my hand, een as I stood with the soles of my slippers on the floor, even as I felt myself solidly contained by the expectant looks of my children. It was the fault of the torture that my husband had inflicted. But enough, I had to tear the pain from memory, I had to sandpaper away the scratches that were damaging my brain.” - Elena Ferrante

31. “And the game of dominoes is much like life: You gotta play the bones you’ve pulled. It don’t matter if you got seven doubles in your damn hand.” - S.B. Redd

32. “I'm going to marry him. And if he thinks he can get divorced and married every two or three years in the approved Hollywood fashion, well, he never made a bigger mistake in his life. He's going to marry and stick to me.” - Agatha Christie

33. “We must be so heavenly minded that we are compelled to be of earthly good!” - Marilynn Dawson

34. “I find it funny that you could pass the same person on the street, in a store, or even in your neighborhood many times before actually meeting, thinking you’ve never seen them before, but when you are finally introduced, they seem to pop up everywhere.” - Courtney Giardina

35. “You never have to suffer because of, or be denatured by, another person, even someone you love.” - Rossana Condoleo