Ex-Wife Quotes

“I wondered what he was thinking, and I thought, "It is not true that, in time, one 'gets over' almost anything. In time, one survives almost anything. There is a distinction.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“I felt cold and dry, like a Martini.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“Families—strangers who knew one well when one was a child.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“And Lucia said that New York’s a jail to which, once committed, the sentence is for life; but that it is such a well-furnished jail, one does not mind much.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“I hate him; I’m never going to see him again. I’m going to kiss so many other men I shan’t remember what he was like. He says I’m a slut; I’ll be a slut, but never with him, again. Lucia, why did he do this to me?”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“I'll simplify the question. Do you love me, or do you hate me?" "That's no simplification, and you know it.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“Men used to bring me violets and now they bring me Scotch. Liquor isn’t a gift to a woman, it’s just an investment in her.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“Yes, another Great Romance would be the death of me. One gets the same feeling, or near enough, on four Manhattans if they’re good; and that failing, one can see what five will do. The hangover from Manhattan’s shorter’n that from Romances. . . .”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“Men told Lucia I was lovely looking, but completely cold. Why cold? I let them kiss me when they must, in cabs, dancing in hot nightclubs, at parties. They were not real. Neither was the office.

Clothes were real. I bought many clothes so that, when Peter called up, I could say “come over instantly” and I would be marvellously dressed. I dressed carefully, always, because I might meet some friend of Peter’s, who would go back to him and say, “I saw Patricia; she was looking beautiful.” Then he would call up sooner.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“Freedom from men? Which of us is free who is emotionally absorbed in any man? The choices for women used to be: marriage, the convent of the street. They're the same now. Marriage has the same name. Of you can have a career, letting it absorb all emotional energy (just like the convent). Or you can have an imitation masculine attitude towards sex, and a succession of meaningless affairs, promiscuity (the street, that is) taking your pay in orchids and dinner dates instead of money left on the dresser.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“A dream made real, an experiment achieved—and a dream lost, an experiment ended forever. But it did not end in shabbiness and recriminations—so there remains, something.… Something… perhaps very much… a fire to warm my hands at all the days of my life”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“I wondered what she was like, underneath her attitudes. But I knew now, that neither I nor anyone else would ever be sure as to that.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“But I must think of something to talk about. I gave him cigarettes. He was looking at me as if he loved to look at me; and yet, as if it hurt him.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“In a sense, my dear Peter, I mourned you only seven hours, but I may be going to mourn you all my life besides.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“Two tears dropped down into my salad. I hoped Peter did not see them. One had one's pride. No, that was silly. I did not have any pride, because I cared.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“You darling imbecile—I think you are the nicest person I have ever known. Whatever happened to you has made you poised and tolerant, and comprehending, and anyone who knows you should be grateful for whatever produced the result.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“one October evening, when we were walking along lower Fifth Avenue, I said abruptly: “Look here. Don’t have any illusions about me. I have slept with more men than I can remember.” That was exaggeration, but I had to exaggerate, lest I should understate. He did not look disgusted or shocked or even surprised. He said, “That’s interesting. What were you doing—trying to use sex as an anaesthetic for something-or-other? That can’t be managed, usually.” I said, “You needn’t be polite about it. If you think I am an awful person, say so.” He said, “You darling imbecile—I think you are the nicest person I have ever known. Whatever happened to you has made you poised and tolerant, and comprehending, and anyone who knows you should be grateful for whatever produced the result.” I said, “Oh.” I said, “Do you mean it—you aren’t just being sorry for me?” He said, “God, no. I mean it.” Something in me that had hurt horribly at odd moments, for a long, long time, stopped hurting forever. I slipped my arm through his. “I am glad you don’t mind, but anyway I stopped.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“I never tried it before ... but maybe the only satisfaction in anything, in the end, is the consciousness of having behaved well.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“Being civilized means that one keeps one's words unrelated to one's thoughts, when necessary.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“All I want is peace. I feel as old as Time, no matter how perennial Iook.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“I may not be pure, but thank heaven I look immaculate.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“Some men at sixty are the total of experiences had and philosophies considered. Bill was the total of recollected meals and wine, and of women kissed. Now, contentedly, he surveyed other people’s youth.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“Ex-wife Grade A, I was. Sex-appeal, dresses well, looks young, dances lightly, can make wisecracks, and is self-supporting. Lets a man talk. Does not gold-dig, except for another round of li- queurs after dinner. Never passes out or gets raucous, or gets sick. Not susceptible to the “I want you, I want you, I want you” attitude, but likely to succumb to “pity me, my life is lonely”— once with any man.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“I was twenty-seven. More than a thousand crowded days intervened between myself and that younger woman who be- lieved she could not live without Peter. When, rarely, now, I was reminded of the Peter I had known, I thought of him kindly, as someone with whom I had shared a painful postadolescence, someone who no doubt had been as bewildered as I about most things. He and I were married and had a child and separated, before either of us grew up.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“I let Charlie take me upstairs to find drinks. He talked about women, and love, and snatching the unrepeatable golden moments as they came, else the champagne grew flat. That was the general tenor of it, anyway. I let him kiss me.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“Tell me some philosophy that’s not adolescent. Self- expression—the new freedom for women-Freud, that Great Excuse?”

“There is progress, though, Lucia. Myself, I’ve progressed, in taste, from Scott Fitzgerald to Ernest Hemingway.”

“How much progress is that?”

“A damn long distance on the road to bigger and broader vocabularies.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“Don’t generalize from one example and an irrelevant one. You have a practically universal sex-appeal. As soon as you begin to be even a little interested in people, again, instead of just decorative but altogether unresponsive, you’ll have dozens of men asking to ‘love’ (her accent was derisive) you for a night or a month or two or even longer. I worry about that.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife

“We were just talking. Pretty soon it would be time to make up one’s face, and put on a velvet frock, and things would start happening fast again. It was not a bad life, while things happened fast. And they usually did.”
― Ursula Parrott, Ex-Wife