Erica Jong Quotes

There can be no summary and dramatic end to a marriage - only a slow and painful unravelling of a tangled skein of threads too stubborn to be broken.

Who among us is not thinking about divorce, except for a few tiny-minded stick-in-the-muds who don't count?

Getting a divorce is nearly always as cheerful and useful an occupation as breaking valuable china.

When a marriage founders, this may well be cause for tremendous sadness, but it's not a failure of spirit or character. People change, their goals and dreams alter, their ideas of themselves grow, or they just meet someone they like better.

Divorce is simply modern society's version of medieval torture. Except it lasts longer and leaves deeper scars. A divorce releases the most primitive emotions; the ugliest, raw feelings. Emotionally wounded people do their best to inflict pain upon the other party, but rather than using claws they use divorce lawyers.

The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is not necessarily one.

The end of a marriage has got to be one of the saddest events one can experience. I’ve heard that the pain [of divorce] is second only to an actual death in the family, and that sounds about right.

Oprah deserves the best. I am not the best when it comes to divorce. What do I know about divorce? Nothing at that time.

Divorce too often is the bitter fruit of anger. A man and a woman fall in love, as they say; each is wonderful in the sight of the other; they feel romantic affection for no one else; they stretch their finances to buy a diamond ring; they marry. All is bliss-that is, for a season. Then little inconsequential activities lead to criticism. Little flaws are magnified into great torrents of faultfinding; they fall apart, they separate, and then with rancor and bitterness they divorce.

Women leave their marriages when they can't take any more. Men leave when they find someone new.

Divorce is an embarrassing public admission of defeat.

A divorce is like a controlled explosion. Everyone on the outside is OK.

I don't think anybody whose ever been divorced can tell you divorce is easy or fun or feels like anything other than a tremendous failure.

I believe that the dissolution of a marriage comes about by the breaking down of self-esteem.

If you believe in romance, and if you believe in marriage, you also have to believe in divorce. It's like, with 'Getting On,' a lot of people say, 'I don't want to watch that. It's so dark.' But you can't just want to go to weddings and children's birthday parties. You've got to witness it all.

Sadly, half of marriages end in divorce. Half of my girl friends and male friends have been through one, and their kids are doing great. There's no shame around it - unless you want to project that on to yourself - but certainly there's no longer cultural shame. Everyone is walking through it.

At 58, I knew I had to get a divorce. At that age, it's an almost impossible thing to go through. I had been married 33 years. I had been married for 33 years. I didn't know anything else.

Unfortunately, it's the new normal to get divorced - and divorced with children is its own soil rich with land mines. There's a lot of comedy but a lot of heartache, too.

Going through divorce while shooting a reality show is terrible.

Divorce in itself is so difficult to get through.

There is a crisis in America. That crisis is divorce. It is easier to get out of a marriage than (to get out of a) contract to buy a used car.

The process of divorce is about loading that blanket, throwing it up, watching it all spin, and worrying what stuff will break when it lands.

Divorce: fission after fusion.

There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage just like the rhythm of a courtship, only backward.