Alice Duer Miller Quotes

The trouble with many married people is that they are trying to get more out of marriage than there is in it.

People are terrified. A lot of them are in relationships that aren't satisfying, and if you tell them they can change their life, they get really scared.

Boredom is often the cause of promiscuity, and always its result.

What we will be seeking... for the rest of our lives will be large, stable communities of like-minded people, which is to say relatives. They no longer exist. The lack of them is not only the main cause, but probably the only cause of our shapeless discontent in the midst of such prosperity.

The proper basis for marriage is mutual misunderstanding. The happiness of a married man depends on the people he has not married. One should always be in love - that's the reason one should never marry.

People fall out of love, or get married for the wrong reasons. People change. The older generation - they got married and had a kid when they were 20. How do you know who you are when you're 20?

My parents are really good people - they just are not meant to be together.

I've noticed in England once people reach a certain level they feel they have to get married.

I mean, what do people talk about when they're married?" "Their kids, I guess." "Maybe that's all they have in common.

People were having sex before I was born. My parents had sex before I was born, nothing to do with me. I'm not trying to stop sex. I'm trying to stop people from dying from sex.

Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.

A man and a woman marry because both of them do not know what to do with themselves.

Never look at other people's bad fortune,' my mother said. 'If you do, it will come back to find you instead of its rightful owner.

As you know, the best way to solve a problem is to identify the core belief that causes the problem; then mock that belief until the people who hold it insist that you heard them wrong.

If you aren't giving people something to talk about, you've become too dull.

The trouble is that people seem to expect happiness in life. I can't imagine why; but they do. They are unhappy before they marry, and they imagine to themselves that the reason of their unhappiness will be removed when they are married.

But things don't just fall apart. People break them.

why can't we love the right people? what is so wrong with us that we rush into situations to which we are manifestly unsuited, which will hurt us and others? why are we given emotions which we cannot control and which move in exact contradiction to what we really want? we are walking conflicts, internal battles on legs.

When I was 14, a lot of people said, "She's such a good actress, she loves theater, she looks like a woman, she should consider moving to L.A. and trying to do this professionally." My parents were hesitant, but they would take me.

People associate clothes with actual behavior, and it's kind of crazy. If you get shot in some Levi's you don't go after Levi's. It's not the clothes. It's always the people.

The death anxiety of many people is fueled ... by disappointment at never having fulfilled their potential. Many people are in despair because their dreams didn't come true, and they despair even more that they did not make them come true. A focus on this deep dissatisfaction is often the starting point in overcoming death anxiety.

The unhappiest people I know, romantically speaking, are the ones who like pop music the most; and I don't know whether pop music has caused this unhappiness, but I do know that they've been listening to the sad songs longer than they've been living the unhappy lives.

The lesser of two evils, or the least of the worst, is not good enough for the American people anymore.

And Left-wing people are always sad because they mind dreadfully about their causes, and the causes are always going so badly.

Warmth, perfume, rugs, soft lights, books. They do not appease me. I am aware of time passing, of all the world contains that I have not seen, of all the interesting people I have not met.