“Among the divorced, the least marriageables in our society are older women, highly educated who make a good salary.”

“Studies show men tend to marry down — someone slightly younger, less educated, making less money,” Dr. Adler-Baeder said. “Women in their 50s literally don’t have a visible pool of eligible men around them.”

“And if she’s tall on top of that,” Dr. Adler-Baeder said, “the pool’s even smaller.”

"Families are the last people who should be entrusted with the task of finding you a spouse, for they are incapable of appreciating that you may have changed since the age of 12."

"The troubled attitude of the English to alcohol seems often to stem from an anxiety about lack of supply. [...] Managed well, the drinking of alcohol is a beautiful experience — socially cohesive, possibly even enlightening."

"By stubbornly, needfully going back, we are asking to be relieved of our strangeness, when strangeness is the whole point. [...] And arms may indeed embrace us, and stories may get told. But in the end they won't keep us, and we can't stay."

'Love stories depend on disappointment, on unequal births and feuding families, on matrimonial boredom, and at least one cold heart. Love stories, nearly without exception, give love a bad name."

"The truth is that fighting about money is easy. Much harder is to talk and listen and fashion together a solution that makes both people content."

"The government's job is to promote family planning and population control measures rather than market products for sexual pleasure."

"The same thing you’re experiencing with your daughter online is a reflection of how you’re not a part of her social network in real life." "I thought you weren’t going to comment on my family dynamics."

"I finally learned something maybe most people learn as a kid. If you want someone to come around to your point of view, it’s not wise to curse and then tell them they're idiots."

"We would not have chosen the burdens we anticipated, and in fact we declared upfront our inability to handle such burdens. But we are stronger than we thought."

"When someone tells me I’m lucky to have J, I agree. I’m fortunate I found him when I did, and not when I am 70. However, the fact remains, I refuse to settle for less. He’s equally lucky to have me. [...]"

"The poor that strive, spend and invest do not easily fit the argument so often used over the past months: that immigrants represent a drag to the U.S. economy."

“But you hadn’t asked her to marry you yet!” “We weren’t actively trying to get pregnant. We were, like, if it happens, it happens,”

"The father told me he was going to marry this daughter off the same way he married off his others. These people say the dowry, its gold, is the woman's right under the Koran. But when it comes to the dinners, the parties, the salons -- this is not Islam.

"One thing that really awakens my rebellious streak is 20 centuries of one sex dominating the other. We talk of slavery, feudalism, exploitation -- but the most unjust domination is that of one-half of the human race over the other."

"You can't have the three of us in a frame together, looking the way we do, and not think we're Jewish. It would be just like having the proverbial white elephant in the room."

“Indulged, coddled, pressured and micromanaged on the outside, my young patients appeared to be inadvertently deprived of the opportunity to develop an inside. They lack the secure, reliable, welcoming internal structure that we call the ‘self.”’

It's out of respect for our family so we do it, but when I go to visit him alone, I feel he knows I'm there. That's when I think I'm actually reaching him again."

"All my friends have Fulla now, but I still like Barbie the best. She has blond hair and cool clothes. Every single girl in Saudi looks like Fulla, with the dark hair and the black scarf. What's so special about that?"

"In the end, it's not the job, or the home crowd, or the broken chair waiting to be fixed in a basement waiting to be cleaned that we humans flee when we hit the road. Those are just the hooks employed by the past and future."

"Anarchism is great as an attitude. I lost faith that you could run the world according to anarchists' principles. [...] "It's hard being an anarchist parent because as a parent you have to be the authority figure."

"Portland is a great city that attracts a lot of educated people. But the real estate is becoming outrageously expensive. And then you get wealthy singles and wealthy retirees. What's missing are kids. And that feels really sterile to me."