“All marriages have a time limit if you enter them for the wrong reasons. Marriage doesn't get easier...it only gets harder. If you marry someone hoping it will improve things, you might as well set your timer the second you say, 'I do.”

“The only reason we were married in such haste was that my mother begged me not to marry Andrew at all. One of you in a marriage has to be soft, she said. One of you has to know how to say, Have it your way. That’s not going to be you, dear, so it might as well be the man.”

“The topic of marriage makes all of us nervous... To say you don't want to get married makes you wonder what you're doing sleeping in the same person's bed several times a week, but to say you do brings waves of despair.”

“Marriages go through hard times. Sometimes you have to get in there and fight for your love. That's the only way for it to get better.”

“You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion. ... The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that -- well, lucky you.”

“The only thing that will make it possible for you to marry is if you meet your bridegroom on your wedding day, so he doesn't have the chance to get to know you ahead of time.”