“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.”

“Americans, who make more of marrying for love than any other people, also break up more of their marriages, but the figure reflects not so much the failure of love as the determination of people not to live without it.”

“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.”

“Marriage seemed like such a small space whenever I was in it. I liked the getting married. Courtship has a plotline. But there's no plot to being married. Just the same things over and over again. Same fights, same friends, same things you do on a Saturday. The repetition would start to get to me.”

“When I get married I'm going to make the marriage work. Getting married is forever, no matter what my spouse does.”

“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.”