Mary Jo Putney
A witty vicar once said that a good marriage is like a pair of scissors with the couple inseparable joined, often moving in opposite directions, yet always destroying anyone who comes between them. The trick is for the blades to learn to work smoothly together, so as not to cut each other.Collection: Witty
What one loves in childhood stays in the heart forever.Collection: Children
Competence is a great creator of confidence.Collection: Competence
Principles are sometimes an unaffordable luxury.Collection: Luxury
I love Christmas. A time to slow down and enjoy life and be with my family and friends. In busy years, it keeps me sane. In bad years, it makes me feel whole again.Collection: Years
Parents and children were put on earth to give each other grief. You were my punishment for how I behaved to my own father. And I'll have my revenge when you have children of your own.Collection: Revenge
[On New York City:] From a dating point of view, it's like a really large rummage sale - lots of strange items, but darned little that you'd want to take home.Collection: New York
If death is inevitable, one should try to die well.Collection: Trying
I've always thought of this city as Disneyland for adults. ... There's no danger of Las Vegas expiring from an excess of good taste.Collection: Vegas
we all grow up thinking our parents found us under cabbage leaves and that sex didn't exist before our personal coming-of-age.Collection: Sex
Once you can fake sincerity, you can fake anything.Collection: Fake
Enigmatic - the quality of keeping silent and making people wonder if one is stupid rather than opening one's mouth and removing all doubt.Collection: Stupid
Like cats and ice cream, showers were among life's simple, uncomplicated pleasures.Collection: Cat
You don't have to be crazy to be a writer, but it certainly does helpCollection: Crazy
But gratitude would not have me love you as I do. Love was inspired by what you are - the good, the bad, and even the foolish, which is what you're being right now.Collection: Gratitude
But why, she thought wryly, did a man seem more attractive as he became less available? How humbling to think one had so much in common with a cow stretching its neck through a gate for better grass.Collection: Men
Life is a good deal more comfortable if one doesn't expect it to be fair.Collection: Life Is
My brother said that at Eton, students were told caning builds character. I suppose girls are caned less because we aren't thought to have much character." "Which is the sort of thing males say when they don't know any women.Collection: Girl
Europeans condemned Chinese foot binding, but any society that had invented the corset had a lot to answer for.Collection: Feet