The Uncoupling Quotes

“The generation that had information, but no context. Butter, but no bread. Craving, but no longing.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Uncoupling

“Apparently, something can happen inside someone you love—it can just happen somehow—and like magic she thinks that she’s had enough, and that the way the two of you have been for a really long time is no longer worth the effort. Does that sound familiar to anyone.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Uncoupling

“People like to warn you that by the time you reach the middle of your life, passion will begin to feel like a meal eaten long ago, which you remember with great tenderness.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Uncoupling

“Another spell had been thrust upon her so long ago...She hadn't been able to see it but it was real. Otherwise why would you rise up from your enclosed and well-defended self and go be with that other person? Why would you open your life, the most secret entries into yourself, to someone you didn't really know? Who would do that unless she had to?”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Uncoupling

“Wasn't one of the goals of life to comfortable in your own skin and in your own bed and on your own land? But as soon as you achieved it, you felt an immense sadness, and then you wanted to wreck everything around you, just because you could. Comfort was the best thing, and maybe the worst.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Uncoupling

“certain concrete signs of optimism were no longer as central a part of the school experience: the smell of pencils, for instance, with their suggestion of woodshop and campgrounds and the promise of some precocious kid’s standout in-class essay.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Uncoupling: A Novel

“for all that parents ever wanted, really, was for you to love their child the way they did.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Uncoupling: A Novel

“She had gotten an old cassette of the music that day from the school library, which still carried a small and arbitrary assortment located in a drawer in the back marked CASSETTES—which at this point in time might have been marked SCRIMSHAW.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Uncoupling: A Novel

“The two Lucys are going to go to the movies with Eli and I,” Robby said, “Great. And you have English teachers for parents.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Uncoupling: A Novel

“Once, long ago, Dory and her infant daughter were riding a bus in the city, when an old woman leaned over and said, “May I tell you something, dear?” She had a kind face full of valleys and faults. Dory imagined she was about to describe the baby’s beauty—in particular, the curve of the mouth—and she made her own mouth assume a knowing, pleased modesty. But what the woman said, leaning even closer, was, “You will never have another day in your life that is free of anxiety.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Uncoupling: A Novel

“when you’re young, you don’t really believe you’ll ever be anything other than young.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Uncoupling: A Novel

“all the girls had secretly sprung up in height, even as the teachers and mothers had gotten squashed and lost height and calcium, their bones ground down with an invisible pestle.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Uncoupling: A Novel

“A high school play was a time of high emotion and meaning; if you were in a play, you felt as if the play mattered. The success or failure of any production seemed like a real reflection on you personally.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Uncoupling: A Novel

“Stellar Plains, New Jersey, was a town that got mentioned whenever there was an article called “The Fifty Most Livable Suburbs in America.” Unlike most suburbs, this one was considered progressive. Though the turnpike that ran through it was punctuated by carpet-remnant outlets and tire wholesalers, and even an unsettling, windowless store no one had ever been to, advertising DVDS AND CHINESE SPECIALTY ITEMS, Main Street was quaint and New Englandy, with a cosmopolitan slant. There was an excellent bookstore, Chapter and Verse, at a moment when bookstores around the country were making way for cell-phone stores.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Uncoupling: A Novel

“What you knew, felt and wanted now, and the way you could love now, had a long valley of seriousness running through it that had always perhaps been there, though to a lesser extent.”
― Meg Wolitzer, The Uncoupling