Julie G’s Reviews > The Amateur Marriage > Status Update

He wished he had inhabited more of his life, used it better, filled it fuller.

So much about their parents had been embarrassing. Or did all children feel that way?

She loved the rituals of dating--the dressing up, the little flutter of anticipation, the process of leading somebody from small talk to real discussion.

The woman had no partitions; if she was angry at one person she let her anger spill over onto the world at large.

It occurred to him that his wife had amazing reserves of strength, that women like Pauline were the ones who kept the planet spinning. Or at least, they made it appear to keep spinning, however it might in fact be wobbling on its axis.

In the car, their mother said you couldn't very well force children to go to church if their own father wouldn't go. Then she slammed on the brakes and said, "Oh! I'm so embarrassed! I thought part of this road was for me." She was speaking to the driver of an oncoming wagon, although of course he couldn't hear her. "I beg your humble pardon," she told him.

The thought of fixing lunch in a kitchen still littered with breakfast things, with dirty dishes and food-stained bibs and picture books and parts of toys, filled her with pure despair.