Quotes from Andrew Neiderman

I am sure I was babbling like some lovesick teenager. I shouldn't keep saying 'teenager'. Many of my so-called contemporary friends babble about their infatuations with this actor or that singer, too. Adolescence doesn't really disappear. It hides behind adult responsibility, poking its head out every time it has the opportunity. I

So you think I'll be all right?' 'You'll be fine. Everything will be fine.' 'As it could be?' 'It's always as it could be. Don't look for perfection. Look for—' 'Survival with a touch of pleasure, a touch of happiness?' 'It's all anyone can expect.

Off in the distance, the clouds seemed to part to make way for a commercial jet. People on board were getting excited. They were probably coming home. What feeling could match that? I thought.

Skype or FaceTime or whatever Internet magic puts husband and wife on a computer screen. Until they find a way to convey touch, it doesn't do more than increase your longing.

Why was it a stranger could look at me and immediately see me, but my husband of nearly twenty years could barely see me standing in front of him most of the time? Do we eventually wear each other, put on each other like a pair of old gloves, hardly noticing what we're doing because we've done it so often?

Elise Shelly, whose parents were divorced, told her that Elise's mother said people fall in love for ten minutes, get married and follow the dots. She finally figured out that Elise's mother meant they do everything together afterward because that's the way it was supposed to be and not because they wanted to, passionately.

And so it begins again …

he simply and probably naively assumed so much about me, about us. Right now, it didn't occur to him that I wouldn't agree with his political thoughts, or that I would dislike to make something he enjoyed eating. It was as if he believed that I would always trim and cut around my thoughts and feelings so they would slip in comfortably beside his own. He was confident that my surrender or compromise was part of that famous female DNA

Was that faith or arrogance and selfishness? Should I dislike him for wanting us to ride on smooth waters, or should I rock the boat and condemn him for not seeing me as more of an individual? Many of the women I knew did that, some so vigorously that they defeated their own marriages.

Who lives in fantasy more, I wondered, Ronnie or me? No one's to blame for it. In fact, we should be grateful. That's what the highest species can do: imagine. Without it, we'd have only rain when it rained and not a romantic walk in the rain without feeling a drop. We'd be overwhelmed by age and never believe anyone envied us. We'd be at the mercy of facts.

To become somebody,first you need to be under somebodie's supervision.

The man himself.

Book shelves were on the right-hand wall and a framed print of Christina's World on the left. 'Mr Saunders found that picture in a closet and thought it might be something you'd like.' 'It was always in here,' I said, looking at it. I had often stared at it and wondered about the woman in the picture and how much like her I often felt. 'I do like it. I like it very much.

I never liked the way time went by when I worked for Sebastian. It wasn't that it dragged; it was completely the opposite. I would look up and discover that I had been swimming for hours and had never lifted my head up long enough to realize it. If anything, it contradicted the expression, Time flies when you're having fun. Time just evaporated

Surely, I thought, there is something magical about someone who was on the same wavelength as you were, feeling the way you felt when you felt it. Anticipating correctly was the best love song any girl could want. It meant you cared enough to think hard about someone else beside yourself. And I'm sorry, but you could count on your fingers how many like that you knew your whole life.

As I looked across the table at Ronnie and watched how he studied this uncomplicated menu, I wondered if the simple answer to all bad marriages is that one outgrows the other. Maybe people shouldn't marry until they're in their fifties.

It was pretty obvious to me that he had just begun working here and was desperately trying to make a good impression. He was the type who would be proving his maturity all his life. He wouldn't appreciate that until he was over sixty.

Take a holiday?' 'Find a reason to spend time on your own; only you won't be on your own. There must be one place you'd like to go. It doesn't have to be far away. There's a lot of static around you here. You need a chance to pause, take some deep breaths, so you can think better about the things you're doing and the things you want.' 'Maybe,

I found myself staring at him and trying to remember if he ever said anything original. How many women look at their husband one day and wonder what in hell it was that made them want to be with him for a lifetime? Didn't they realize what it meant to spend day in and day out with the same man, hear the same phrases, see the same expressions and realize the same emotions? Was I being unfair?

Perhaps he often thought the same things about me, but was never obvious about it. Why couldn't it be that I was very different now from the girl he had first dated and it wasn't entirely his fault? I was hard in places where I had been soft. I was too cynical and certainly too critical now. I was sure that, at least once a day, he probably looked at me with disappointment and had his second thoughts, too. Or maybe it wasn't anyone's fault; it just was.