Stephanie Coontz Quotes

In my divorce, I stood up and said to my ex-wife, 'Hey, I messed up. This had nothing to do with you. I didn't understand what marriage was. I cheated. I was wrong. We couldn't fix it; it got worse. I stepped away because I didn't want it to get any worse. You're the mother of my kids - I don't want to hate you.'

The passion of hatred is so long lived and so obstinate a malady that the surest sign of death in a sick person is their desire for reconciliation.

Now that we are cool, he said, and regret that we hurt each other, I am not sorry that it happened.

If you're an enemy, I would love for you to be a fan, because I don't like enemies.

Placing 'amicable' and 'separation' together creates an oxymoron - we don't usually decide to end a partnership until the very sight of our soon-to-be ex fills us with disgust, misery, agony or a combination of all three.

Enmity immediately tumbles away when one side lets it fall.

On both sides, all should be forever forgotten and forgiven—what has from the beginning of the unrest, no matter how or where, from one side or the other, happened in terms of hostility

The only solid and lasting peace between a man and his wife is, doubtless, a separation.

Having egregious divorces - where you just hate each other - is really the easy way out.

A quarrel between friends, when made up, adds a new tie to friendship.

More people should apologize, and more people should accept apologies when sincerely made.

Everyone knows that when you go through a divorce, it's a really difficult time for both parties and you've all - you believe, you both believe, individually, that you've put your best into it.

It is better to decide a difference between enemies than friends, for one of our friends will certainly become an enemy and one of our enemies a friend.

When two people decide to get a divorce, it isn't a sign that they 'don't understand' one another, but a sign that they have, at last, begun to.

My second wife Bonnie Owens and I worked together after we divorced for a period of maybe 20 years. And I managed to stay friends with another wife. And then there's one that I don't mess with. Everybody's got one of those.

By intensity of hatred, nations create in themselves the character that they imagine in their enemies. Hence it comes that all passionate conflicts result in an interchange of characteristics. We might say with truth, those who hate open a door by which their enemies enter and make their own the secret places of the heart.

I had a lot of resentment for a while toward Kim Novak. But I don't mind her anymore. She's okay. We've become friends. I even asked her before this trip for some beauty tips.

If the world would apologize, I might consider a reconciliation.

Peace, of course, is different from divorce; indeed, in essential respects, divorce is the opposite of peace.

Many promising reconciliations have broken down because while both parties come prepared to forgive, neither party come prepared to be forgiven.

We'll hold out our hand; they have to unclench their fist.

I think we might well ask: How does one destroy his enemy by becoming like him?

This is the vow to those consumed by hatred. We have but one path—waging war on them to the death.

A close friend can become a close enemy.

It takes years to turn enmity to amity.