“Look, writers aren't perfect, I want to cry, any more than husbands and wives are perfect. The only unfailing rule is, If they seem so, they can't be.”

“I had a perfect life in my reach once, and it was a crashing bore. Perfect is too clean, too easy. I don't want perfect any more than I want to be perfect. I want imperfect.”

“I couldn't fathom being with anyone other than Trent- he's the perfect boyfriend, and would make the perfect husband, and someday the perfect father to my children. I can see it. I just can't feel it.”

“There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more.”

“The only thing that scares me more than space aliens is the idea that there aren't any space aliens. We can't be the best that creation has to offer. I pray we're not all there is. If so, we're in big trouble.”

“In particular, husbands and wives who do poorly at nonverbal communication tend to be dissatisfied with their marriages. Moreover, when such problems occur, it's usually the husband's fault .In the first ingenious study of this sort, Patricia Noller (1980) found thathusbands in unhappy marriages sent more confusing messages and made more decoding errors than happy husbands did. There were no such differences among the wives, so the poorer communication Noller observed in the distressed marriages appeared to be the husbands' fault. Men in troubled marriages were misinterpreting communications from their wives that were clearly legible to total strangers.Even worse, such husbands were completely clueless about their mistakes; they assumed that they were doing a fine job communicating with their wives, and were confident that they understood their wives and that their wives understood them. The men were doing a poor job communicating and didn't know it, and that's why they seemed to be at fault.”