“Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.”

“Just ask yourselves, historians, when was monogamy introduced on to the face of the earth? When those buccaneers, who settled on the peninsula where Rome now stands, could not steal women enough to have two or three apiece, they passed a law that a man should have but one woman. And this started monogamy and the downfall of the plurality system. In the days of Jesus, Rome, having dominion over Jerusalem, they carried out the doctrine more or less. This was the rise, start and foundation of the doctrine of monogamy; and never till then was there a law passed, that we have any knowledge of, that a man should have but one wife.”

“Many marriages would be better if the husband and wife clearly understood that they're on the same side.”

“His wife is, it occurs to Harry, a channel that can't be switched. The same slightly too-high forehead, the same dumb stubborn slot of a mouth, day after day, same time, same station.”

“Monogamy is absolutely imperative. The minute you start fiddling around outside the idea of monogamy, nothing satisfies anymore. Suppose you make love to an exciting woman other than your wife, it can’t remain enough to go bed with her there must be something else, something more than the absolute compulsion of the body. But if there is something more, it will eventually destroy either you or your marriage.”

“Asking for efficiency and adaptability in the same program is like asking for a beautiful and modest wife. Although beauty and modesty have been known to occur in the same woman, we'll probably have to settle for one or the other. At least that's better than neither.”

“Too many good things all seem the same after a while.”

“For too many centuries women have been being muses to artists. I wanted to be the muse, I wanted to be the wife of the artist, but I was really trying to avoid the final issue — that I had to do the job myself.”

“We have too many cellphones. We've got too many Internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.”

“It's so childish, "greatest country in the world." It's like saying, "I have the greatest wife in the world. Not just the one best suited for me, the greatest wife in the world. And if you could have my wife, you'd kill your wife."”