How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
I spent a good deal more time picturing myself as a father than as a husband. I figured I'd be a husband first, and certainly, I imagined what sort of woman I might marry [...] but I didn't picture myself as any particular type of husband. Just me, married, basically. (21.1)
Oh, Judd. Rookie mistake, seriously. Even we know that marriage requires compromise, and we're planning to die as confirmed bachelors. Here, Judd's immaturity leads him to believe he can have a successful marriage without changing anything about himself.
Quote #5
But still, I can't help wondering if that baby might have saved us, the same way that losing it accelerated our downward spiral into the thorny underbrush of marital decay (21.2)
As Tolstoy (almost) said: all happy marriages are alike; all unhappy marriages were ruined by children in some way or another. Look at Paul and Alice, for example. The pressure to conceive weighed so heavily on Alice that she put her relationship with Paul at risk.
Quote #6
"Over the course of a fifty-year marriage, one bad year isn't very significant. Your marriage might still be there to be saved. But you'll never know if you keep indulging your hate and anger like the world owes you reparations." (22.11)
For all her eccentricities, Hillary really does have a good perspective on life. Everything she's saying here is true, and it implies that she and Mort had plenty of bad years to go around too. Really, Hillary's marriage is probably the one we should be imitating.