Howard Jacobson Quotes

We didn't know that Mother had gone through a passionate love affair or that Father suffered from severe depression. Mother was preparing to break out of her marriage, Father threatening to take his own life.

People have quite a simple idea about 'Anna Karenina.' They feel that the novel is entirely about a young married woman who falls in love with a cavalry officer and leaves her husband after much agony, and pays the price for that.

'Anna Karenina' is just a story about a woman falling in love with a bloke who is not her husband. It's gossip, rubbish - on the other hand, it's the deepest story there could be about social transgression, about love, betrayal, duty, children.

I must've got whacked on the head. He presented a totally false person for me to fall in love with.

Oh, boy. I'm still in touch with about 90 percent of my exes. They would describe me as being unlucky in love.

I don't want to suggest that matrimony was necessarily a tragic affair - some of our neighbours' marriages seemed quite functional, if somewhat routine; nevertheless, in the workaday world, it is wedlock that is most likely to offer the occasion for life-threatening disappointment.

I've had bad luck with both my wives. The first one left me and the second one didn't.

My husband and I were very in love, and I had no reason to suspect that his interests lay anywhere else.

It's a funny kind of month, October. For the really keen cricket fan, it's when you discover that your wife left you in May.

A few years ago, I fell in love with a man before realising he was married.

She stares at me for a moment, and then she bursts out laughing. “You haven’t seen his perfect little wife and his perfect little girls. Believe me, Oliver, I’m not the great love of his life, the one he’ll never forget.” “You are to me,” I say.

My love for you was bulletproof but you're the one who shot me.

A love that dies has never lived.

There is not on earth so base a knave as the man who wins the love of a woman when he knows that he cannot or ought not to requite it.

There is nothing more humiliating than loving someone so much that you forgive the infidelities.

Oh yeah. That's why. Like a fairy tale. I was marrying the Prince. I just happened to be in love with the pauper.

It is not every man's fate to marry the woman who loves him best

Last year my wife ran off with the fellow next door and I must admit, I still miss him.

When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

Because i've suffered. Because many times in my life i have tried to love with all my heart, and my love has wound up being trampled or betrayed.

There is one thing worse than an absolutely loveless marriage: a marriage in which there is love, but on one side only.

I loved him, but love isn't enough. All the fairy tales, the romance novels, the soap operas; they're all lies. Love does not conquer all.

It is very hard to be in love with someone who no longer loves you, but it is far worse to be loved by someone with whom you are no longer in love.

it may not always be so; and i say that if your lips, which i have loved, should touch another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch his heart, as mine in time not far away; if on another's face your sweet hair lay in such a silence as i know,or such great writhing words as, uttering overmuch, stand helplessly before the spirit at bay; if this should be, i say if this should be- you of my heart, send me a little word; that i may go unto him, and take his hands, saying, Accept all happiness from me. Then shall i turn my face,and hear one bird sing terribly afar in the lost lands.

I am now convinced that I have never been much in love; for had I really experienced that pure and elevating passion, I should at present detest his very name, and wish him all manner of evil. But my feelings are not only cordial towards him; they are even impartial towards her. I cannot find out that I hate her at all, or that I am in the least unwilling to think her a very good sort of girl. There can be no love in all this.