Quotes from Sarah Dunn

Writing novels is so much more satisfying than writing television.

For me, the word 'housewife,' because of, like, the 'Real Housewives' - I don't think housewife really means what it used to mean. To me, it's been a little bit overused to the point that it's not as loaded as it might be. I feel like in a perfect world we would say 'American Mom with Kids,' or something like that. 'Mom with Small Children.'

If you really want to stay married to the person you're currently married to, I would not suggest trying an open marriage.

I am really bad at being a mom. I think it's hard for me to be a mom. I do my best. I am not the poster child for being a mother, I will say that. I wish I was.

Just because I'd spent so many years coloring inside the lines, it wasn't fair for me to expect perfection. People make mistakes. Life isn't fair. People change.

She never got a chance to fall out of love, to do it properly, slowly and thoroughly, and the result was he was like a phantom limb. Gone but still there. And like a true phantom limb, the preponderance of feelings associated with him were painful.

She knew that what she was going through was nothing special, just garden-variety heartbreak, the sort of thing that poets and novelists had been writing about for hundreds of years, but she also knew, from those same books, that there were people who never recover form it, ones who go on through life beset by a dim and painful longing.

Ordinarily, I am the person who falls in love quickly and somewhat inappropriately and then goes on to destroy what is a good thing. That's always been my style. So, you know: I get it. And I feel right now the way I imagine all those guys felt with me. And I have to say, for the first time in my life, I feel something approaching compassion for them.

You've got to let people be just, you know, people. Everyone does bad things sometimes, for all sorts of reasons. You've got to at least understand.

It was one of those perfect New York October afternoons, when the explosion of oranges and yellows against the bright blue sky makes you feel like your life is passing through your fingers, that you've felt this autumn-feeling before and you'll probably get to feel it again, but one day you won't anymore, because you'll be dead.

I wanted a boyfriend who was a Christian but who wasn't uptight about it, who was good-looking and intelligent and had an interesting job and a sense of humor, who said fuck when the situation warranted it, who had attempted to but been unable to finish St. Augustine's City of God, who could argue politics with my mother and talk business with my father, who liked Indian food and had nice friends and knew how to dress and would like someday to live abroad.

Betsy hadn't had sex, actual; sex-sex, full sex, in two hundred and fifty-three days. She decided on her thirty-seventh birthday that she wouldn't sleep with anyone unless it was in the context of a committed relationship which had some sort of future, and she was only gradually coming to the realization of what happens when a woman her age makes a decision like that: she never has sex again.

Just because I'd spent so many years coloring inside the lines, it wasn't fair for me to expect perfection. People make mistakes. Life isn't fair. People change.

I don't want to go back into that dressing room and take off my boots and my pants and start putting on jeans only to discover that the ones you brought me are all too tight, and then when I ask for the next size up, be informed that they're the biggest size you carry. I can't take that today. Seriously, I'll blow my head off. So look at me, look at my ass, look at my gut, take it all in, and then tell me honestly if you anticipate we're going to have a problem.

Life is long. And it's getting longer for most of us. Most people in this country will have three or four marriages in their lifetime. Each one will challenge them and suit them in a different way. The lucky few, the ones who are willing to work at it, will have a handful of very different marriages, all with the same person. —

I am consciously surrendering conciousness.

It was like the time her sister suggested she read Emily Dickinson to the tune of Gilligan's Island. Once certain thoughts got into your head, you couldn't get rid of them.

There was a guy roasting chestnuts on the street corner, and the smell wafted over, hinting at the coming Winter, but in a good way, in the way that makes you think about Christmas and snow days and fires crackling away in fireplaces.

More and more often these days days, though, Holly found herself thinking that perhaps what God wanted was not to be feared or obeyed or even to be worshiped - but maybe God just wanted to be wondered about.

It's interesting said Jack. What is? You believe in God. he said. You just don't believe that God is good.

It was awful, but it's over. And now I feel like I'm finally coming up for air. Yes, well, it's been a very stressful time for both of us, said Leonard. How has it been stressful for you? said Holly. I had that move. Holly just looked at him. What, said Leonard. You moved apartments said Holly.

Sometimes Holly could start to see the order in things, she got a glimmer of a pattern. And that thing everyone seems to say these days, about how things always happen for a reason- Holly was getting close to being willing to concede that that was maybe, possibly true.

on fading passion) Sex was like the can of baking powder she kept on a high shelf in her pantry, something she didn't need right now but that she knew she could get her hands on without too much trouble.

it was hard to be a mother when you had never been mothered yourself. Your children's needs remind you of your needs. Their pain reminds you of your pain. All of it reminds you of how bad it felt, how hard it was, how much you wanted and needed and didn't get. It's very hard.