“The problem, simply put, is that we cannot choose everything simultaneously. So we live in danger of becoming paralyzed by indecision, terrified that every choice might be the wrong choice.”

“There is no choice more intensely personal, after all, than whom you choose to marry; that choice tells us, to a large extent, who you are.”

“In the modern industrialized Western world, where I come from, the person whom you choose to marry is perhaps the single most vivid representation of your own personality. Your spouse becomes the most gleaming possible mirror through which your emotional individualism is reflected back to the world. There is no choice more intensely personal after all, than whom you choose to marry; that choice tells us, to a large extent, who you are.”

“Equally disquieting are the times when we do make a choice, only to later feel as though we have murdered some other aspect of our being by settling on one single concrete decision.”

“Now imagine a life in which every day a person is presented with not two or even three but dozens of choices, and you can begin to grasp why the modern world has become, even with all its advantages, a neurosis-generating machine of the highest order.”

“Last spring, David had offered this crazy solution to our woes, only half in jest:... "What if we admitted that we make each other nuts, we fight constantly and hardly ever have sex, but we can't live without each other, so we deal with it? And then we could spend our lives together- in misery, but happy to not be apart." Let it be a testimony to how desperately I love this guy that I have spent the last ten months giving that offer serious consideration. The other alternative in the backs of our minds, of course, was that one of us might change. He might become more open and affectionate, not withholding himself from anyone who loves him on the fear that she will eat his soul. Or I might learn how to ... stop trying to eat his soul.”

“I alwaysthought we only had two choices in our lives when it came to pizza crust—thin and crispy, orthick and doughy. How was I to have known there could be a crust in this world that was thinand doughy? Holy of holies! Thin, doughy, strong, gummy, yummy, chewy, salty pizza paradise.”