A Quote by Norman Mailer

There are four stages to marriage. First there's the affair, then there's the marriage, then children, and finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce.

Norman Mailer

Quote Topics

Affair Cannot Children Divorce Finally First Four Fourth Know Marriage Stage Stages Then Which Without Woman

Quote Author

Norman Mailer
American - Novelist
January 31, 1923 - November 10, 2007

There are four stages in a marriage. First there's the affair, then the marriage, then children and finally the fourth stage, without which you cannot know a woman, the divorce.

Norman Mailer

Divorce Myths: 1. When love has gone out of a marriage, it is better to get divorced. 2. It is better for the children for the unhappy couple to divorce than to raise their children in the atmosphere of an unhappy marriage. 3. Divorce is the lesser of two evils. 4. You owe it to yourself. 5. Everyone's entitled to one mistake. 6. God led me to this divorce.

R. C. Sproul

When a couple gets to the last stage, one or both partners may have an affair. But an affair is usually a symptom of a dying marriage, not the cause. The end of that marriage could have been predicted long before either spouse strayed.

John M. Gottman

My parents separated when I was four. It wasn't the smoothest of divorces, but then as my mother always says, you can't have a passionate marriage without a passionate divorce.

Sophie Ellis-Bextor

I know that the only completely happy life for man and for woman is their life, first together, and then with their children. I am a firm believer that no marriage can be really happy, and no home a happy one for the children as well, unless man puts woman first and woman puts man first, each for the other the giver of every good gift. Children are the fruit of this total love.

Pearl S. Buck

Passion, sexual passion, may lead to marriage, but cannot sustain marriage. The purpose of marriage is the raising of children, for which patience, not passion, is the necessary foundation.

Edward Abbey

Supporting the definition of marriage as one man and one woman is not anti-gay: it is pro-traditional marriage. And if support for traditional marriage is bigotry, then Barack Obama was a bigot until just before the 2012 election.

Marco Rubio

A woman is not a whole woman without the experience of marriage. In the case of a bad marriage, you win if you lose. Of the two alternatives - bad marriage or none - I believe bad marriage would be better. It is a bitter experience and a high price to pay for fulfillment, but it is the better alternative.

Fannie Hurst

I do not mind if a PM or leader of the opposition is single but if he or she chooses to dispense with marriage despite living with someone and having children, then I think that shows a contempt for marriage which sends an unfortunate message.

Ann Widdecombe

Marriage is a unified institution. Marriage means a committed, legally sanctioned relationship between a man and a woman. That's what it means. That's what it means in the revelations. That's what it means in the secular law. You cannot have that marriage coexisting institutionally with something else called same-gender marriage. It simply is a definitional impossibility.

Lance B. Wickman

Nothing provides the antidote to narcissism, or the environment for the healthy raising of children, or the way for people to take care of one another, as does the marriage of a man and a woman. And while most divorces are terribly sad, divorce itself no more undermines the institution of marriage than car crashes undermine the institution of driving.

Dennis Prager

Marriage is a very strange thing. It's a very public institution, it's meant to tell the world that two people are going to live together, to declare that their children will be legal, that these children can inherit their property. It's meant for social living, to ensure that some rules are observed, so that men and women don't cross the lines drawn from them. At the same time, marriage is an intensely private affair, no outsider will know the state of some one else's marriage. It's a closed room, a locked room...

Shashi Deshpande

An affair now and then is good for a marriage. It adds spice, stops it from getting boring... I ought to know.

Bette Davis

You're saying, no, state said two kinds of marriage; the full marriage, and then this sort of skim-milk marriage.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Marriage is like a table with four legs - the couple, the children, the parents and the in-laws. Break any of these and the marriage crashes to the floor