Margaret Kennedy quotes:

Boy meets girl. Boy marries girl. Boy and girl angst over which family they visit at Thanksgiving and which one in December and whether or not it's best to serve turkey or goose for the family feast. When first faced with the reality that the family you married into does things differently, the warmth of tradition can take on a chill.

It is better to break one's heart than to do nothing with it.

where the bedroom is wrong the whole house is wrong.

Hard though it may be to accept, remember that guilt is sometimes a friendly internal voice reminding you that you're messing up.

Patience is the capacity to endure all that is necessary in attaining a desired end. ... Patience never forsakes the ultimate goal because the road is hard. There can be no patience without an object.

... acquired tastes are the mark of the man of leisure.

Too-broad questions, such as, "What's on your mind?" are apt to be answered "nothing" nearly one hundred percent of the time. Be careful of slipping into ""psycho-speak," however. Kids pick up instantly your attempt at being a pseudo-shrink. Most resent it and are apt to tune out anything that sounds like you're reading a script from the latest child-psychology text.

It's no use to worry about what people think. I never do. I used to. But when I saw that they'd really rather think wrong than right I gave it up.

They are emotional gluttons, both of them. They gobbled up every sensation they could extract from marriage, and now they are seeing if separation won't provide them with a few more.