Heidi Julavits Quotes

I'm thinking of doing a marital comedy for one of the studios, but I want it to be so painful that it'll have a profound effect on married couples who see it together.

I think my wife puts up with me 'cause I try. I think that's all any guy can do is just try. That's right! 'Cause we ain't never gunna get it. 'Cause as soon as we get close you ladies change it. It's like this memo goes out, 'they're getting close, change it, change it!'

Not everyone wants to know everything their partner did. Maybe it's enough to say, "Things aren't going well in our marriage. I've made mistakes. I don't think you've been a good partner to me. How do we go forward together?" I think there's a different answer for every couple. But I think intimacy is asking that question.

A married couple that plays cards together is just a fight that hasn't started yet.

All couples must bear the strain of getting acquainted, having been, up to then, merely intimate.

I think the thing about relationships is that you're always thinking "Oh, it's going to go bad." [...] But then, it's the same thing that all the silly magazines say, "Take time for yourselves. Go away."

There are always two figures in a marriage, two votes, two conflicting sets of decisions, desires and limitations.

I'm not putting myself up as the epitome of virtue. I certainly am living a non-traditional life. But it is also a loving life and a very supportive one. I think that both in this, and the previous relationship, I think that I've been doing the best I can.

The trouble is you almost have to marry a man before you can find out the sort of wife he needs; and usually it's exactly the sort you are not.

I think women are conditioned to stand by their man and watch them make it to the top, but most men never believe the person they get into a relationship with is going to rise any higher than she was when they met. It takes a very special, evolved person to be able to deal with change within a relationship.

I don't think a married couple can go through life without laughs together any more than they can without tears.

An occasional lucky guess as to what makes a wife tick is the best a man can hope for, Even then, no sooner has he learned how to cope with the tick than she tocks.

Men are thinking, writing, and creating, because women were pouring their energy into those men; women are not creating culture because they are occupied with love.

Bukharin's a swine and surely worse than a swine because he thinks it below his dignity to write a couple of lines.

Marriage is an arrangement by which two people start by getting the best out of each other and often end by getting the worst.

I keep social with everyone because I want to know what's going on at every level. At the same time, if I'm not alone a certain amount of time per day then I'll go nuts, because I can't write and I can't think. I can't deal with people all the time. I like being alone. I'm a bit of a cat lady in that way.

The saddest thing was actually getting fed up with one another. It's like growing up in a family. When you get to a certain age, you want to go off and get your own girl and your own car, split up a bit.

When you think about email or IMing, why aren't you writing back? I can see your avatar, I know you're online, why aren't you writing me back? But with Twitter, everybody sends their responses to Twitter, and Twitter then sends them out to everyone. So there's not this constant connection. You can be hyperconnected, then you can take a break for a couple days and it's fine.

I've learned that sometimes love is not enough. You can have a soul mate and be madly in love with that person, but it's not necessarily enough. I think you have to have personalities that mesh well. You have to be the yin to their yang. You also have to be open to figuring things out together and communicating even when it's the last thing you want to do.

(The new boyfriend) knows I write every day for hours but has no idea that all I’m writing about is me. It seems wiser to let him think I’m an aspiring novelist instead of just an alcoholic with a year of sobriety who spends eight hours a day writing about the other 16.

A husband and wife who are in the habit of occupying separate rooms are either beings apart, or they have found happiness. Either they hate or they adore each other.

I think there is no way to write about being alone. To write is to tell something to somebody to communicate to others. . . . Solitude is noncommunication, the absence of others, the presence of a self sufficient to itself.

Marriage. The beginning and the end are wonderful. But the middle part is hell.

I think in most couples or partnerships, there's a constant struggle for power and dominance.

Most wives think of their husbands as bumbling braggarts with whom they happen to be in love.