“Mutual suspicions of mental inadequacy are common during the first year of any marriage.”

“The proper basis for marriage is a mutual misunderstanding.”

“Whoever invented marriage was an ingenious tormentor. It is an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings. The whole point of marriage is repetition. The best it aims for is the creation of strong, mutual dependencies.”

“with a singlemindedness common only to former Soviet interior-ministry troops and first-year law students”

“If you expand the boundaries of mental illness, which is clealry what has happened in this country during the past twenty-five years, and you treat the people so diagnosed with psychiatric medications, do you run the risk of turning an anger-ridden teenager into a lifelong mental patient?”

“During my first year as a pastor I performed funerals for 50 church members—and they were the wrong ones.”