“The freedom to be single, to create a path through life that does not look like everyone else's, can be unsettling to people who feel more secure with fewer choices.”

“Most married people can expect a specific other person to be there for them in a way that a single person typically cannot. Does that make married people more mature than single people?Married people are on training wheels. Singles are riding the bikes for grown-ups.”

“There is another reason ever-single women fare even better than previously married women in later life. They mastered the single life long ago. From structuring social events in a culture that caters to couples, to figuring out how to work and get all the tasks of everyday life accomplished when there may or may not be others readily available to do their unfair share, always-single women have been there, done that. It is not a new or daunting challenge.”

“The other side of mental blanketing - the buffing and puffing up of marriage to keep it seeming shiny and magical - is up against a formidable fact. Statistically speaking, the act of marrying is banal. Even though many Americans wait longer than ever to marry, and often do not stay long in the marriages they do enter, most Americans - close to 90 percent - still do marry at some point in their lives. Some try it over and over again. Marrying, then, does not make people special; it makes them conventional.”

“People aren't often asked to make life or death decisions. There are no causes to die for. You can go through life never knowing which of your friends would really come through for you”

“I've hoped for this for so many years, waited for someone to come along whom you could finally love more than your family, someone who would turn you inside-out and toss you off your path,' His mother looked positively gleeful in the face of his misery. 'Someone just like Nicola for you to blow it with.”

“Looking for the good in people is never stupid.”