Quotes about wife
page 7

“He saw in a vision his eldest son (then a child and at London) appear unto him with the mark of a bloody cross on his forehead, as if it had been cutted with a sword, at which amazed he prayed unto God, and in the morning he came to Mr. Camden's chamber to tell him, who persuaded him it was but an apprehension of his fantasy at which he should not be disjected; in the meantime comes there letters from his wife of the death of that boy in the plague. He appeared to him (he said) of a manly shape, and of that growth that he thinks he shall be at the resurrection.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden (1711)

Death, God, Boy, Thinking

“[playing Pictionary with his wife and some friends]
[My wife] goes "that's not a bicycle, Rembrandt!" And I go "well, it ain't a monkey wearing glasses, Helen Keller!"”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Aged and Confused (2009)

“One danger of a man succeeding is that it teaches his wife and daughter not to worry about success.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Why Men Are the Way They Are (1988), p. 148.

Success, Daughters

“In preparing this record, penned by my own hand, of my life and my participation in our great struggles for national existence, human liberty and political equality, I make no pretence to literary merit. The motive that induces me is not authorship. The import of the subject matter of my narrative is my only claim to attention. The statements of facts are a matter of documentary evidence. The comments are my own and show how I saw the matters treated of, whether others saw them in the same light or not. Respectfully dedicating this work to the millions of armed men and devoted women who participated in the great wars of this country, I leave it as a heritage to my wife and son.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

Source: Reminiscences (1964), p. vi

Life, Women, Men, War

“I was not yet inclined to live the life of a celibate.... I have taken a young wife of honest but middle-class family although everyone tried to persuade me to make a court marriage. But I feared pride, that inherent vice of the nobility, particularly in that sex, and that is why I chose one who would not blush to see me take my brushes in hand. And to tell the truth it would have been hard for me to exchange the priceless treasure of liberty for the embraces of an old woman.”

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) Flemish painter

In a letter to his friend Peiresc, c. 1635; as quoted in Rubens and the Roman Circle, Huemer, p. 44
his second wife was Helena Fourment, the daughter of a silk merchant, Daniel Fourment; when Rubens married her in 1630 she was just
1625 - 1640

Life, Marriage, Truth, Fear

“I have denied my eyes, both inner and outer. I am not a child, or virgin, or modest wife, fearing to offend. No one owns my eyes now but me. If I have not the stomach by now to look upon any sight in the world, good or evil, beautiful or vile, when shall I? It is far too late for innocence. My only hope is the much more painful consolation of wisdom. Which can grow out of knowledge alone. Give me my true eyes. I want to see. I have to know.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: World of the Five Gods series, Paladin of Souls (2003), p. 201

Wisdom, Pain, World, Fear

“I was born in the Realms of Etiquette;
In early years, unprotected and poor.
Alone, I learnt to distinguish between Evil and Good;
Untutored, I toiled at bitter tasks.
The World's Law honours Learning and Fame;
Scholars prize marriages and Caps.
With these fetters I gyved my own hands;
Truly I became a much-deceived man.
At ten years old I learnt to read books;
At fifteen, I knew how to write prose.
At twenty I was made a Bachelor of Arts;
At thirty I became a Censor at the Court.
Above, the duty I owe to Prince and parents;
Below, the ties that bind me to wife and child.
The support of my family, the service of my country—
For these tasks my nature is not apt.”

Bai Juyi (772–846) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"Chu Ch'ēn Village" (A.D. 811)
Arthur Waley's translations

Marriage, Books, World, Family

“My wife will tell you I'm practically addicted to the History Channel … and I read a lot of history.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

2000s, CNN interview (2000)

History, Reading

“My family means more to me than the artificial trappings of my career. If ever I had to choose between my career and my family, the wife and kids would definitely come out on top.”

Mel Gibson (1956) American actor, film director, producer and screenwriter

Excerpted from Wensley Clarkson's "Mel Gibson; Living Dangerously", page 300.

Family

“Valmiki stood up and broke free out of that hard anthill. Suddenly he saw all around him many houses of hermits and their families, young trees carefully watered, a retreat cleared from the forest. Four boys ran up to him from the river and cried "The wife of some great warrior weeps by Ganges. She is fair as a Goddess fallen from heaven, all bewildered, all alone, never seen before, with child, and with small gifts tied from the city within a silk cloth beside her. Go to her, welcome her and protect her.”

Vālmīki Ramayana

In p. 6.
Narada to Valmiki.
Ramayana

Family, Boy, Tree, Water

“Mr Touchett used to think that she reminded him of his wife when his wife was in her teens. It was because she was fresh and natural and quick to understand, to speak – so many characteristics of her niece – that he had fallen in love with Mrs Touchett.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady (1881), Ch. VI.

Love, Understanding, Nature, Thinking

“We are indeed a strange lot! There are times we doubt that we have any emotions we can honestly call our own. I have approached every dynamic scene change in my life the same way. When I married Charlie MacArthur, I sat down and wondered how I could play the best wife that ever was…. My love for him was the truest thing in my life; but it was still important that I love him with proper effect, that I act loving him with great style, that I achieve the ultimate in wifedom.”

Helen Hayes (1900–1993) actress

Thoughts on actors, Ch. 1
On Reflection (1968)

Love, Life, Way, Change

“I reproach myself for a gross error. But I would reproach myself more if I had persisted in an error after observations revealed it clearly to be that. I made a deal of money in the late 1940s on the bull side, ignoring Satchel Paige’s advice to Lot’s wife, “Never look back.” Rather I would advocate Samuelson’s Law: “Always look back. You may learn something from your residuals. Usually one’s forecasts are not so good as one remembers them; the difference may be instructive.” The dictum “If you must forecast, forecast often,” is neither a joke nor a confession of impotence. It is a recognition of the primacy of brute fact over pretty theory. That part of the future that cannot be related to the present’s past is precisely what science cannot hope to capture. Fortunately, there is plenty of work for science to do, plenty of scientific tasks not yet done.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

February 1985, in William Breit and Roger W. Spencer (ed.) Lives of the laureates
1980s–1990s

Money, Law, Hope, Error

“A cat is the ideal literary companion. A wife, I am sure, cannot compare except to her disadvantage. A dog is out of the question. It may do at a butcher's – it would be out of place in a bookseller's. A cat for a bookseller is a different creature temperamentally from the same animal at a fishmonger's or a baker's. In these shops the cat is a useful animal – I suppose it is employed to eat fish entrails or to keep down rats and mice – but in my shop its function is that of a familiar. It is at once decorative – contemplative – philosophical, and it begets in me great calm and contentment.”

William Darling (politician) (1885–1962) Scottish politician

Source: The Bankrupt Bookseller (1947), p. 48

Dogs, Cats, Question, Fish

“She nursed him, she read to him, she anticipated his wants, and was solicitous about his feelings; but there had entered into the husband’s mind the certainty that she judged him, and that her wifely devotedness was like a penitential expiation of unbelieving thoughts—was accompanied with a power of comparison by which himself and his doings were seen too luminously as a part of things in general. His discontent passed vaporlike through all her gentle loving manifestations, and clung to that unappreciative world which she had only brought nearer to him.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Middlemarch (1871)

Love, World, Feeling, Reading

“Prayer helped me with the loss of my wife to cancer and with a child who had fallen on tough times. Now prayer helps me to be a father, to be an actor and to be a man, it always helps to have a bit of prayer in your back pocket. At the end of the day, you have to have something and for me that is God, Jesus, my Catholic upbringing, my faith. In a way (my life) all leads back to a little boy in Navan, my home town on the banks of the Boyne. Sometimes, it has been painted in melodramatic tones but it was a fantastic way to be brought up. The Catholicism and the Christian brothers, those are deep-rooted images and the foundation for a person of some acting skill, God has been good to me. My faith has been good to me in the moments of deepest suffering, doubt and fear. It is a constant, the language of prayer… I might not have got my sums right from the Christian Brothers or might not have got the greatest learning of literature from them but I certainly got a strapping amount of faith. But there is one thing that the people of Ireland know how to do and that is to survive. You have to keep your faith and stay optimistic.”

Pierce Brosnan (1953) Irish-American actor, film producer, and environmentalist

Pierce Brosnan talks about his deep Catholic faith http://www.irishcentral.com/culture/entertainment/pierce-brosnan-talks-about-his-deep-catholic-faith-118983269-237736371 (March 31, 2011)

Life, God, People, Fear

“Remember this moment. If we don't convince the field marshal (Fedor von Bock) to fly to Hitler at once and have these orders (Commissar Order) canceled, the German people will be burdened with a guilt the world will not forget in a hundred years. This guilt will fall not only on Hitler, Himmler, Göring, and their comrades but on you and me, your wife and mine, your children and mine, that woman crossing the street, and those children over there playing ball.”

Henning von Tresckow (1901–1944) German general

1941. Fest, Joachim. Plotting Hitler's Death, 175
Robert Kane, Disobedience and Conspiracy in the German Army, 1918-1945, p. 163.

Children, People, World, Flying

“An Englishman thinks first of his work — his job, he calls it — and then of his sport, and last — a good way last — of his wife.”

Agatha Christie book Death in the Clouds

Death in the Clouds (1935)

Way, Thinking, Sport

“I read the book of Job over and over. Poor Job. He was afflicted. According to the Bible, he was a just man. But Satan said, “You put your finger on him, and injure him, and he won’t be such a just, devout man.”
So God said to Satan, “Do anything you want with him, but spare his life.” And so he was afflicted. His children deserted him — he lost everything. He was reduced to sackcloth and ashes. Even his wife said, “Curse God and die.” But he didn’t. But he did rebuke God. He said, “I’ve lived a devout life. Worshipped You. I was just to my fellow man. Accomplished all I could in Your name. Look what’s happened.”
And God answered him, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world? Where were you when I created the galaxies and the universes? Answer as a man! Gird up your loins and answer as a man!””

Taylor Caldwell (1900–1985) Novelist

That’s the subject of my next book.
1970s-, The Captains, the Kings, and Taylor Caldwell (1978)

Life, God, Children, Books

“I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof; 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures, that in a moment can so disfigure us that our nearest friends, Wife, and Children stand afraid and start at us.”

Thomas Browne book Religio Medici

Section 40
Religio Medici (1643), Part I

Death, Children, Nature

“At dinner time, Nasreddin finds no meat on the table. He asks his wife, "What happened to the meat?"
His wife replies, "The cat ate it."
Nasreddin breezes into the kitchen, puts the cat on the scales, and discovers the cat to be weighing three pounds. Nasreddin quizzically questions the result, "If the meat I brought home weighed three pounds, then, where is the cat? And, if this happens to be the cat, then what happened to the meat?"”

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

Hasan Bülent Paksoy, Alpamysh: Central Asian Identity Under Russian Rule (1979, 1989), , p. 5–6

Home, Cats, Question, Time

“Human nature being what it is, or at least conditioning being what it is I was so insecure. I always had to watch out for other women. She leans forward and laughs "Because he was so damned good looking, you know. When you are not the wife it's great but when you are…"”

Protima Bedi (1948–1998) Indian model and dancer

On her marital relationship with Kabir Bedi which did not work out, quoted in "I have been a hippie all my life".

Women, Nature

“What I am defending is the real rights of women. A woman should have the right to be in the home as a wife and mother.”

Phyllis Schlafly (1924–2016) American activist

The Equal Rights Amendment Falters, and Phyllis Schlafly Is the Velvet Fist Behind the Slowdown, People Magazine, 1975-04-28, 2013-06-11 http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20065183,00.html,

Women, Home

“He loved his wife but hated what life with her had become, cursing himself for even thinking this way.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Travis Parker, Chapter 16, p. 228
2000s, The Choice (2007)

Love, Life, Hate, Way

“Once you’ve married, be strict but just with your wife, don’t allow her to forget herself, and when a misunderstanding arises, say: “Don’t forget that I made you happy.””

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Guide for Those Wishing to Marry (1885)

Happiness, Forgetting

“[about magazines school children sell, which his wife buys without even looking at what she's buying]
We get a magazine called Modern Ferret. It's a magazine about that hairy rat, I swear to God! And if you ever see it, pick it up. On the inside cover, it's a woman and a man, who publish this magazine, and they wrote this inscription: "Someday, we hope to make money doing what we love, playing with our ferret." Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Pee-Wee Herman lose a lot of money playing with his ferret?”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

Cheap Drunk: An Autobiography (2002)

Love, Money, God, Children

“Mr. Hoover's presidency was drawing to a close and Mr. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, one of the most dynamic grave diggers of the Western world, succeeded on a platform not dissimilar to that of his predecessor. Though Mr. Roosevelt belonged to the Democratic party, his social background indisposed him for a time to leftist policies, both national and international. But his wife (from another branch of the Roosevelt family) was more in tune with leftist ideas, undoubtedly the aftereffect of higher feminine education in the United States. Whereas Mr. Roosevelt played his politics by ear, his wife, who wielded considerable influence, was ideologically far more consistent. Mr. Roosevelt, moreover, had but the scantiest education for his task; he hardly knew Europe, and his knowledge of foreign languages was as modest as his acquaintance with the mentality of other nations. Largely ignorant himself, and profoundly anti-intellectual, he had no way of judging, evaluating, and coordinating expert opinion. Even worse, perhaps, his sense of objective truth was gravely impaired. His handicap was by no means primarily of a physical nature.”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Source: Leftism Revisited (1990), pp. 230-231

Truth, World, Education, Family

“She snorted. My wife has three ways of showing disapproval. She harangues loud and long when she is not very sure of her position. Or she may be entirely silent when she is terribly sure. This is usually an act of kindness on her part, as though she were dealing with a dumb animal. Or, lastly, she may snort. This means, I have at last learned, that she disagrees, that she thinks I am a dumb animal, and by God, kindness can go just so far.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

On his wife's reaction to the notion (of showing up at the ball park without a ticket, for Game 1 of the World Series, and expecting to get in) that gave rise to this, his best known book, from A Day in the Bleachers https://books.google.com/books?id=iJqHg1sitk0C&pg=PA1&dq=%22contest.+i+felt+the+urge%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAWoVChMI587t3tnKxwIVAXE-Ch1XnQRG#v=onepage&q&f=false (1955), p. 1 <br class="br">Other Topics

God, Way, Thinking, Learning

“Cause my wife gets up and goes shopping.”

James Garner (1928–2014) American film and television actor

Asked why he gets up and goes to work every day.
Tavis Smiley interview (2004)

“We should also do away with the idea that a marriage is a sacrament, and that there is any God who is rendered happy by seeing a husband and wife live together, although the husband gets most of his earthly enjoyment from whipping his wife.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Interview with the Chicago Times, Feb. 14, 1881.

God, Marriage, Happiness, Idea

“You just remember, mijito, whenever your wife comes screaming at you that she’s going to kill you because you forgot her birthday, that what she’s really saying is ‘I love you, I depend on you for my life and love, and so this is why I hate you and want to kill you!’ It’s always with our wife, our best friends, and our relatives that we end up having most of our troubles in life, mijito.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Burro Genius: A Memoir (2004)

Love, Life, Hate, Birthday

““People like your wife are dangerous.”
“Why?” Hamilton asked.
“They don’t belong to any group. They fool around with everything. As soon as we turn our back—”
“So you destroy them. You turn them over to the lunatic patriots.”
“The lunatic patriots,” McFeyffe said, “we can understand. But not your wife. She signs Party peace petitions and she reads the Chicago Tribune. People like her—they’re more of a menace to Party discipline than any other bunch. The cult of individualism. The idealist with his own law, his own ethics. Refusing to accept authority. It undermines society. It topples the whole structure. Nothing lasting can be built on it. People like your wife just won’t take orders.””

Philip K. Dick book Eye in the Sky

Source: Eye in the Sky (1957), Chapter 16 (p. 231)

People, Peace, Law, Fools

“In the opposition proper, both among the liberal conservatives and among the Populares, the storms of revution had made fearful havoc…. In the 'democractic' party, among the rising youth, Gaius Julius Caesar, who was twenty-four years of age (born 12 July 102 B. C.) drew towards him the eyes of friend and foe. His relationship with Marius and Cinna (his father's sister had been the wife of Marius, he himself had married Cinna's daughter); the courageous refusal of the youth who had scrace outgrown the age of boyhood to send a divorce to his young wife cornelia at the biddining of the Dictator, as P(ompeius had in the like case done; his bold persistence in the priesthood conferred upon him by Marius, but revoked by Sulla; his wanderings during the proscription with which he was threatened, and which was with difficulty”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 1

Youth, Age, Fear, Courage

“And I am standing here because the woman I share my life with has taught me and demonstrates for me every day just what love is. [Voice breaks as wife Rita Wilson tearfully mouths 'I love you'. ]”

Tom Hanks (1956) American actor

67th Academy Award Speech (1995)

Love, Life

“…We beg leave to transport the reader to the back-parlour of the post-master's house at Fairport, where his wife, he himself being absent, was employed in assorting for delivery the letters which had come by the Edinburgh post. This is very often in country towns the period of the day when gossips find it particularly agreeable to call on the man or woman of letters, in order, from the outside of the epistles, and, if they are not belied, occasionally from the inside also, to amuse themselves with gleaning information, or forming conjectures about the correspondence and affairs of their neighbours. Two females of this description were, at the time we mention, assisting, or impeding, Mrs. Mailsetter in her official duty.”

Walter Scott book The Antiquary

The Antiquary (1816), On the postal service

Time, Housing, Country

“Ram and Kirshan whom Hindus worship are insignificant creatures, and have been begotten by their parents… Ram could not protect his wife whom Ravan took away by force. How can he (Ram) help others?… It is thousands of times shameful that some people should think of Ram and Kirshan as rulers of all the worlds… To think that Ram and Rahman are the same, is extremely foolish. The creator and the creature can never be one… The controller of the Cosmos was never called Ram and Kirshan before the latter were born. What has happened after their birth that they have come to be equated with Allah, and the worship of Ram and Kirshan is described as the worship of Allah? May Allah save us!
Our prophets who number one lakh and twenty-four thousand have encouraged the created ones to worship the Creator… The gods of the Hindus (on the other hand) have encouraged the people to worship them (the gods) instead… They are themselves misguided, and are leading others astray… See, how the (two) ways are different!”

Ahmad Sirhindi (1564–1624) Indian philosopher

Maktubat-i-Imam Rabbani translated into Urdu by Maulana Muhammad Sa’id Ahmad Naqshbandi, Deoband, 1988, Volume I, 396 Letter was written to Hirday Ram Hindu who had “expressed affinity” with Sirhindi’s school of thought.
From his letters

God, People, World, Way

“Orpheus' mistake wasn't that he turned and looked back towards Eurydice and Hell, but that he ever thought he could escape. Same with Lot's wife. Averting our eyes does not change the fact that we are marked.”

Caitlín R. Kiernan (1964) writer

Houses Under the Sea (2007)

Hell, Change

“[W]hen Eisenhower heard that the German residents of a nearby city "didn't know" about a death camp whose stench should have reached their nostrils, he marched them, well-dressed, through the rotting corpses, and made them help dispose of the dead. The mayor of Gotha and his wife, went home from this and hanged themselves. We lack Eisenhower's authority.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011)

Death, Home, Help, Dead

“How incomprehensible is woman's love! —it is not kindness that wins it, nor return that insures it; we daily see the most devoted attachment lavished on those who seem to us singularly unworthy. The Spectator shewed his usual knowledge of human nature, when, in speaking on this subject, he relates, that in a town besieged by the enemy, on the women being allowed to depart with whatever they held most precious, only one among them carried off her husband,—a man notorious for his tyrannical temper, and who had, moreover, a bad—or, as it turned out, a good—habit of beating his wife every morning. Well, all governments are maintained by fear—fear being our great principle of action; and fear, we are tempted to believe, heightens and strengthens the love of woman.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Love, Women, Fear, Nature

“Nesretten Hoca's Wife: In our society, they treat us as if women have no names of their own—you are always so-and-so's wife. I mentioned this to my husband once—and, believe me, I didn't do it to blame or scold anyone. He was deeply touched and saddened. He said to me: "You are right, my dear wife. From now on, whenever they ask me what my name is, I'll say 'I'm the husband of the wife of Nasrettin Hoca.'”

Nasreddin (1208–1284) philosopher, Sufi and wise man from Turkey, remembered for his funny stories and anecdotes

"
Güngör Dilmen, I, Anatolia (1984), Act II; tr. Talât Sait Halman (1991)

Women

“Sail forth into the sea of life,
O gentle, loving, trusting wife,
And safe from all adversity
Upon the bosom of that sea
Thy comings and thy goings be!
For gentleness and love and trust
Prevail o'er angry wave and gust;
And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Building of the Ship

Source: The Building of the Ship (1849), Line 368.

Love, Life, Sea

“I believe that my wife is the most beautiful woman in the world.”

Shahrukh Khan (1965) Indian actor, producer and television personality

From interview with Pratim D. Gupta

World, Beauty

“I am not afraid of reprisals, I have no children, no wife, no car, no debt. It might sound a bit pompous, but I'd prefer to die on my feet than to live on my knees.”

Charb (1967–2015) French caricaturist and journalist

Xavier Ternisien, A "Charlie Hebdo", on n'a "pas l’impression d’égorger quelqu’un avec un feutre" http://www.lemonde.fr/actualite-medias/article/2012/09/20/je-n-ai-pas-l-impression-d-egorger-quelqu-un-avec-un-feutre_1762748_3236.html, Le Monde, 20 september 2012.

Children, Cars

“My last wife [woman-artist Isa Genzken, he married in 1982 - they broke up in 1993] was very competitive, which was hard for both of us.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

“In adopting a republican form of government, I not only took it as a man does his wife, for better or for worse, but what a few men do with their wives, I took it knowing all of it bad qualities. Neither ingratitude, therefore, nor slander can disappoint expectation nor excite surprise. If, in arduous circumstances, the voice of my country should call for my services, and i have the well founded belief, that they can be useful, they shall certainly be rendered; but I hope that no such circumstances will arise and in the mean time, 'pleas'd let me trifle away.”

Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816) American politician

Gouverneur Morris to John Dickinson ( May 23, 1803 http://www.bgdlegal.com/clientuploads/Publications/Publications/John%20Bush%20-%20Gouverneur%20Morris.pdf) <br class="br">1800s

Men, Hope, Disappointment, Time

“It is a fine thing when a believer praises and thanks God if good comes to him, and praises God and shows endurance if smitten by affliction. The believer is rewarded for (every good action), even for the morsel he raises to his wife's mouth.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Al-Tirmidhi, Hadith 537
Sunni Hadith

God, Affliction

“Finally we hit upon the old cathedral of Amsterdam, which belongs to the Reformed Church and which we remodeled. The owners gave us permission, on certain financial conditions, to shoot the film there. Before that, we had planned to use the cathedral of Cologne, but two days before we began our preparations, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover was shown on German television and the archbishop immediately forbade us from entering the cathedral site!”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From an interview in Positif, January 1994
Interviews

Lovers, Cooking

“Well, I certainly was not going to study physics, and I knew I was not going to study biology, but I could have become a sociologist or an anthropologist. However, I found sociology a little soft. I think that somewhere in my mind, I probably already had the notion – which turned out to be right – that if I was going to be a social scientist of some kind, I would like a rigorous social science. The analytical aspect of economics already appealed to me. That must have been so. It was not really a matter of chance. But if my wife had said ‘oh, no, economics was terribly boring’, I would probably have found something else to do.”

Robert Solow (1924) American economist

in Karen Ilse Horn (ed.) Roads to Wisdom, Conversations With Ten Nobel Laureates in Economics (2009)

Thinking, Study, Science, Chance

“A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child. And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of horror. For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I’ve lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage. My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby.”

John Steinbeck (1902–1968) American writer

Pt. 1
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

Love, Life, Men, Search

“Hayden marches down the pitch towards Collymore, bat raised, as if he's just returned from the theatre to find him rifling through his wife.”

Ben Dirs journalist

West Indies v Australia, 2007-27-03, BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/6496463.stm,

“Being a wife-mother and doing a job, it's the toughest damn thing in the world. But we want it.”

Anne Baxter (1923–1985) American actress

"Anne Baxter Dies at 62, 8 Days After Her Stroke" (1985)

World

“The 16 August, 1946 communal riots broke out in Calcutta after a few days. I would have been killed by a Muslim mob in the early hours of that day as I walked back towards my home from the coffee house which I had found closed. My fluent Urdu and my Western dress saved me. My wife and two year old son had joined me a few days earlier in a small room in a big house bordering on a large Muslim locality. On the evening of the 17th we had to vacate that house and scale a wall at the back to escape murderous Muslim mobs advancing with firearms. Had not the army moved in immediately after, I would not have lived to write what I am writing today.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

How I became a Hindu (1982)

Home, Communication, Coffee, Housing

“Ganga Devi wife of Kumar Kampana (died 1374 CE) of Vijayanagar writes as follows in her Madhuravijayam regarding the state of things in the Madura region when it was under Muslim rule:
"The temples in the land have fallen into neglect, as worship in them has been stopped… The sweet odour of the sacrificial smoke and chant of the Vedas have deserted the villages which are now filled with the foul smell of roasted flesh and the fierce noise of the ruffianly Turushkas… The wicked mlechchas pollute the religion of the Hindus every day."”

Gangadevi Indian princess and Sanskrit poetess

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 4

Religion

“I am a wife-made man.”

Danny Kaye (1913–1987) American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian

Referring to the contributions that his wife Sylvia Fine's songs made to his career
[Halliwell, Leslie, Who's Who in the Movies, 2001, HarperCollins Entertainment, ISBN 0002572141, p. 242 (of 593)]

“My wife wants a dog. She already has a baby. The baby’s almost two. My wife says that the baby wants the dog.
My wife has been wanting a dog for a long time. I have had to be the one to tell her that she couldn’t have one. But now the baby wants a dog, my wife says. This may be true. The baby is very close to my wife. They go around together all the time, clutching each other tightly. I ask the baby, who is a girl, “Whose girl are you? Are you Daddy’s girl?” The baby says, “Momma,” and she doesn’t just say it once, she says it repeatedly, “Momma momma momma.””

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

I don’t see why I should buy a hundred-dollar dog for that damn baby.
“Chablis”, opening
Forty Stories (1987)

Dogs, Girl, Time, Baby

“To make a happy fireside clime
To weans and wife,—
That is the true pathos and sublime
Of human life.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

Epistle to Dr. Blacklock.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Life, Happiness

“A rental car in Savannah, Georgia. In the middle of touring, we had a week off. I have a problem with flying, so instead of going home, my wife came to me and we rented a car and drove around. Just pulled off on some dirt roads…”

Brandon Flowers (1981) American indie rock singer

When asked the craziest place he's ever had Sex.
Joshua (October 2006), "The Same 5 Questions We Always Ask: Brandon Flowers". JANE. Volume and issue unknown:42

Cars, Home, Problem, Flying

“She certainly had a little syllogism in her head as to the Duke ruling the borough, the Duke's wife ruling the Duke, and therefore the Duke's wife ruling the borough; but she did not think it prudent to utter this on the present occasion.”

Anthony Trollope book The Prime Minister

Source: The Prime Minister (1876), Ch. 21

Thinking

“The man who comes home exhausted because he has been taught to believe without question that his male identity is based on nine-to-five loyalty and the giving of his best energies to the corporation has made a decision about his sexuality. He sacrifices his corpus to the corporation. His chosen method of expending energy and structuring time disallows afternoon dalliance with his wife or lover.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: The Passionate Life (1983), p. 101

Home, Lovers, Question, Decision

““Why did I never understand…”
“That it was vanity?” I said.
“Mm, but so much worse… Delusion. Because, the thing is—human progress begins, not with one lone man with a weapon, however heroic. Nor with subtle governments, be they never so altruistic. It begins with a man and his wife in bed… and… how could I ever hope to govern humanity, without having been even that human?”

Kage Baker book The Sons of Heaven

Source: The Sons of Heaven (2007), Chapter 12, Section 1 “Three Months: Extract from the Journal of the Botanist Mendoza: Monsters and Ice Cream” (p. 156)

Hope, Understanding

“The wife is a piece of property, acquired by contract; she is part of your furniture, for possession is nine-tenths of the law; in fact, the woman is not, to speak correctly, anything but an adjunct to the man; therefore abridge, cut, file this article as you choose; she is in every sense yours.”

Honoré de Balzac book Physiology of Marriage

La femme est une propriété que l'on acquiert par contrat, elle est mobilière, car la possession vaut titre; enfin, la femme n'est, à proprement parler, qu'une annexe de l'homme; or, tranchez, coupez, rognez, elle vous appartient à tous les titres.
Part II, Meditation Number XII: The Hygiene of Marriage.
Physiology of Marriage (1829)

Law, Sense, Parting

“Engvall and his wife are packing up their stuff to move, with a U-Haul sitting in their driveway.
Friend: Y'all movin?
Engvall: Nope, me and the wife just like to pack all our stuff up once or twice a week, see how many boxes it takes. Here's your sign.”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

A Decade of Laughs (2004)
Here's Your Sign

Box

“At the upcoming Grammy Awards, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony will perform together as the first time, as man and wife. Hopefully music.”

Tina Fey (1970) American comedian, writer, producer and actress

citation needed

Music, Time

“Do not choose for your wife any woman you would not choose for a friend if she were a man.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

“You should know that I had problems at the end of my career as a player here and I don't know if you know that someone [put] a rifle at my head and tied me up and tied up my wife in front of the children at our flat in Barcelona. The children were going to school accompanied by the police. The police slept in our house for three or four months. I was going to matches with a bodyguard. All these things change your point of view towards many things. There are moments in life in which there are other values. We wanted to stop this and be a little more sensible. It was the moment to leave football and I couldn't play in the World Cup after this.”

Johan Cruyff (1947–2016) Dutch association football player

In an interview with Catalunya Radio (April 2008) https://www.theguardian.com/football/2008/apr/17/newsstory.sport, he said that the attempted kidnap (in 1977) was the reason he decided not to go to the 1978 World Cup in Argentina.

Life, Children, World, School

“Too young for wife, too old for child, but the ripe age for comrade — and such a comrade, for there was a boy's gallantry in her eyes and something of a child's confident fearlessness.”

John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician

Source: Midwinter (1923), Ch. XVII

Age, Confidence, Boy

“An elegant writer has observed, that wit may do very well for a mistress, but that he should prefer reason for a wife.”

Charles Caleb Colton (1777–1832) British priest and writer

Vol. I; LXXI
Lacon (1820)

“If your wife gives you her heart, you must take it, thankfully, and use it well, and not pull it in pieces, and laugh in her face, because she cannot snatch it away.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XXIV : First Quarrel; Helen to Arthur

Heart

“Like Andromach, Hector's wife,
Was weary of her life,
When she had lost her joy,
Noble Hector of Troy;
In like manner alsó
Increaseth my deadly woe,
For my sparrow is go.”

John Skelton (1460–1529) English poet

Source: Jane Scroop (her lament for Philip Sparrow) (likely published c. 1509), Lines 64-70.

Life, Joy

“Roy, this is my wife, Georgina Spica -- she has a heart of gold and a body to match… and I am Albert Spica and I have a heart of gold and a great deal of money to match.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Albert
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover

Money, Heart

“Here, when a woman is in childbirth, it is the husband who takes to his bed. He lies there groaning with his head wrapped up and his wife feeds him with loving care. She even prepares the bath for the event.”

Apollonius of Rhodes book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica (3rd century BC), Book II. Onward to Colchis, Lines 1011–1014

Love

“I looked at my wife and said, "You know what? If these people put their own dollar-an-hour raise above the integrity of our nation, I don't wanna be their boss anymore."”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

On his reaction to Minnesota state workers going on strike.
Harvard interview (February 2004)

People

“I have the disadvantage of not being sociable. Wall Street men are fond of company and sport. A man makes one hundred thousand dollars there and immediately buys a yacht, begins to race fast horses, and becomes a sport generally. My tastes lie in a different direction. When business hours are over I go home and spend the remainder of the day with my wife, my children, and books of my library. Every man has natural inclinations of his own. Mine are domestic. They are not calculated to make me particularly popular in Wall Street, and I cannot help that.”

Jay Gould (1836–1892) American businessman

Also quoted in The Life and Legend of Jay Gould (1986) by Maury Klein
Jay Gould : A Character Sketch (1893)

Men, Children, Lie, Books

“Though marriage makes man and wife one flesh, it leaves 'em still two fools.”

William Congreve The Double Dealer

Act II, scene iii
The Double Dealer (1694)

Marriage, Fools

“I got my wife breast implants for her birthday. I've never been a big fan of plastic surgery, but I gotta admit, I've had a lot of fun playing with these things. I haven't given them to her yet…[Audience cheers] I just keep 'em on my tour bus and just rub 'em in my face…I'm glad they clean up easy. [Audience groans] WHAT?! I'm just glad they are not made out of corduroy, that's all I'm saying! I'd have to have 'em Scotchgarded. [imitates spraying Scotchgard on implants] I find it a little ironic that the product that I use to keep from ruining my sofa should spill my drink on it is actually called…Scotch-guard. [Audience cheers] Sometimes, things just work out perfect, don't they? "Yeah, I'm looking for a product that'll protect my sofa should I spill my Scotch on it. What'd ya have?" [imitates clerk turning to look at stock] "We've got Scotch-guard." "Yeah, let's go with that. Do you have Vodka-guard? How about Sperm-guard?"”

Ron White (1956) American comedian

It's a busy couch.
Behavioral Problems

Birthday, Drink, Business, Perfection

“Islam has never been misunderstood. Islam is the problem. But no one is stating the truth. No one is taking a hard look at the root of terrorism which is the brain washing machine called Islam. Islam is not up to me, is not up to any Muslim – man or woman. Islam is exactly what the prophet Muhammad did and said. In order to understand Islam you have to read the biography of Muhammad. It is very traumatising. It is very shocking. He married his second wife when she was six years old. He was over fifty. […] His third wife was Sophia. She was a Jewish woman. It was well documented, well written in our school books that he attacked her tribe. He killed her father, her brother, and her husband. At the same day, he slept with her. That's what I call Islam.”

Wafa Sultan (1958) American psychistrist

Speech at Restoration Weekend, Palm Beach, Florida 2007 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up3yuQDAWKQ

Truth, Books, School, Understanding

“I can see the black spots of the sun [remark to Sonia Delaunay, his wife and female artist].”

Robert Delaunay (1885–1941) French painter

Quote from 'Nous irons jusqu'au soleil', Delaunay; as cited in: 'Futurism', ed. By Didier Ottinger; Centre Pompidou / 5 Continents Editions, Milan, 2008, p. 214
1915 - 1941

Sun

“If the husband sits on a chair in the Garden of Eden, his wife is his footstool.”

Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright

Sholom Bayis, 1889. S. Liptzin. Peretz. Yivo, 1947, p. 153.

“She's online with her friends, and little boys are starting to call the house. Oh, my God, we had a kid call the house at two in the morning. Oh, I lost it. 'Cause first of all, I'm off in La-la land with Shania Twain in the mountains somewhere. I hear a phone ring and I'm like "Who's got a phone in the mountains??" So when I realize it's my phone, I'm already a little miffed, so I go, "Hello!" And this little voice says "Uh... is Emily there?" And I go, "Dude, if you have a brain in your skull, you will hang this phone up right now!" Click. Then my wife turns to me and goes, "Bill, you've got to be nice."”

Bill Engvall (1957) American comedian and actor

And I go, "No, ma'am. "Nice" stops at midnight!"
Blue Collar Comedy Tour, Blue Collar Comedy Tour: The Movie (2003)

God, Mountain, Boy, Housing

“O the refuge of those without refuge, O the destroyer of the fear of those who bow down [to you], O the remover of the earth's burden, O the paramour of the daughter of the earth, O the cause of pleasure in devotees, O the nourisher of the dynasty of the sun, O the one with feet as delicate as the lotus, O the redeemer of the wife of the Brahmin (Ahalyā), O the nourisher of the three worlds, O the slayer of the clan of demons, O the bearer of sharp arrows, O the destroyer of Rāvaṇa in battle, O the new cloud for the Cātaka bird in the form of the descendant of Bhṛgu (Paraśurāma), O Rāma, O the ornament of devotees, take pleasure in my mind with Sītā. ॥ 20.13 ॥”

Rāmabhadrācārya (1950) Hindu religious leader

aśaraṇaśaraṇa praṇatabhayadaraṇa
dharaṇibharaharaṇa dharaṇitanayāvaraṇa
janasukhakaraṇa taraṇikulabharaṇa
kamalamṛducaraṇa dvijāṅganāsamuddharaṇa ।
tribhuvanabharaṇa danujakulamaraṇa
niśitaśaraśaraṇa dalitadaśamukharaṇa
bhṛgubhavacātakanavīnajaladhara rāma
vihara manasi saha sītayā janābharaṇa ॥
Śrībhārgavarāghavīyam

Pleasure, World, Fear, Bird

“Rudy Giuliani's first wife was his cousin. Did you know this? I think that's a very cheap way to go after the Southern vote.”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

The Decider (21 July 2007)

Way, Thinking

“Fallen from his lofty and heroic station; now finally restored to the perception of truth; weighed to earth by the recollection of his own deeds; consoled no longer by a consciousness of rectitude, for the loss of offspring and wife – a loss for which he was indebted to his own misguided hand; Wieland was transformed at once into the man of sorrow?”

Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) American novelist, historian and editor

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

Truth, Loss

“You just think about supporting a wife and children on a dollar and ninety cents a day. Most of us work on Sundays; poor people can’t afford to rest on the Sabbath in a great city like this. Sometimes when I do have a Sunday off I go to church and take my wife and the children. It seems respectable, somehow, to go. And then the minister gets up and talks about the gratitude we ought to feel to God for all the blessings he gives us, and how thankful we ought to be that we live through his mercy. It may be very true as far as he is concerned, but I often think—and I don’t mean to be ungrateful or irreverent—that most people in this world have very little to be thankful for, and very little reason to thank God for life at all. Nine tenths of the people in New York find scarcely a moment in their lives which they can call their own, and see mighty little but misery from one year’s end to the other.”

Jack Finney book Time and Again

Source: Time and Again (1970), Chapter 17 (p. 252)

Life, God, Children, People

“A man … found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

The Kite Runner (2003)

Happiness, Sadness, Way, Mountain

“The trouble now is that most of the wife-beating is among the extremely poor, so that the wife by informing against her husband, takes the last crust out of her own mouth.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Interview with the Chicago Times, Feb. 14, 1881.

“A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Quoted in the "Apophthegms, Sentiments, Opinions and Occasional Reflections" of Sir John Hawkins (1787-1789) in Johnsonian Miscellanies (1897), vol. II, p. 11, edited by George Birkbeck Hill

“Whenever I stumble over my own feet, or blurt out a thought that makes no sense at all, or leave the house wearing one pattern too many, I always think, It's okay, I'm from New Jersey. I love New Jersey, because it's not just an all-purpose punch line, but probably a handy legal defense, as in, “Yes, I shot my wife because I thought she was Bigfoot, but I'm from New Jersey.””

Paul Rudnick book I Shudder

Source: I Shudder (2009), p. 211

Love, Thinking, Sense, Housing

“He is a farmer. He lives a simple life. He's pretty well educated. He's read Shakespeare, he's read Wordsworth. His wife is a teacher. They have a very comfortable life. They don't have anything to complain about in eighteen forty-nine. This is a key point. They did not have anything that would cause them distress. His expectations were perfectly comfortable expectations of an average family, a farming family in America. The Gold Rush changed that. Suddenly he wanted more. Suddenly he wasn't satisfied.”

J. S. Holliday (1924–2006) American historian

About William Swain
The West (1996)

Life, Education, Family, Teachers

“Expectations are high. Clearly I am not a superman. There is a little bit of euphoria in India. I have a wife and two kids.”

Raghuram G. Rajan (1963) Indian economist

On the expectations from him as the Governor of Reserve Bank of India, as quoted in " I am not a superman: Raghuram Rajan http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/i-am-not-a-superman-raghuram-rajan-113101300337_1.html", Business Standard (14 October 2013)

“Our existence has a hectic quality. It is as though mobilization [circa 1937, the pre-war years in his country Austria] were imminent. Each one of us is suffering; we are all constantly worried as to how we are going through the next day. In spite of all this, we [Wotruba and his wife] have an unquenchable lust for life.”

Fritz Wotruba (1907–1975) Austrian sculptor (23 April 1907, Vienna – 28 August 1975, Vienna)

Source: The Human Form: Sculpture, Prints, and Drawings, 1977, p. 21.

Life, War, Suffering, Country

“I explained to the crowd that my voice was hoarse from a cold and that my physician had advised me not to attend. "I hope that you will not disclose to him that I have violated his instructions," I told them. I congratulated Mr. de Klerk for his strong showing. I thanked all those in the ANC and the democratic movement who had worked so hard for so long. Mrs. Coretta Scott King, the wife of the great freedom fighter Martin Luther King Jr., was on the podium that night, and I looked over to her as I made reference to her husband's immortal words.
"This is one of the most important moments in the life of our country. I stand here before you filled with deep pride and joy--pride in the ordinary, humble people of this country. You have shown such a calm, patient determination to reclaim this country as your own, and now the joy that we can loudly proclaim from the rooftops — Free at last! Free at last! I stand before you humbled by your courage, with a heart full of love for all of you."”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, Long Walk to Freedom (1995)

Love, Life, People, Hope

“It certainly must be an immense pleasure to God to see a man work patiently for nothing. It must please the Most High to see a slave with his wife and child sold upon the auction block. If this slave escapes from slavery and is pursued, how musical the baying of the bloodhound must be to the ears of this most merciful God. All this is simply infamous. On the throne of this universe there sits no such monster.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

God, Pleasure, Music, Universe

“Recently I dreamed of you [of the artist Herman van der Weele and his wife] and that you two were very rich and lived in a beautiful place and that I sat in your room with you and Herman, with beautiful fabrics and wallpapers that I couldn't stop looking to them and you wore black glasses, just like me now [to protect his eyes], but they [black glasses] were so amazingly beautiful and they suited you so well, as is only possible in a dream, and your dress was beautifully deep red blue black with exotic figures woven into it and the walls were yellow and pink. Anyway it was all a miracle of beauty and I wished that.... my eyes were healthy again and that we each could spent hundred thousand guilders a week, then we had built a beautiful yacht and we all sailed to the country of the Mikado [Japan], to have a look there.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch / citaat uit de brief van Breitner, in het Nederlands: Laatst heb ik van jelui [de kunstenaar Herman van der Weele en zijn vrouw] gedroomd en dat jelui heel rijk waren en prachtig woonden en dat ik met U en Herman in een vertrek daarvan zat, met zulke prachtige stoffen en behangen, dat ik mij niet kan verzadigen er naar te kijken en gij hadt een zwarte bril op net als ik nu, maar die was zo verbazend mooi en stond U zoo goed, als dat alleen maar in een droom mogelijk is en uw costuum was prachtig diep rood blauw zwart met exotische figuren daarin geweven en de wanden waren geel en rose, enfin het was een wonder van pracht en ik wou dat.. ..mijn oogen weer heel waren en dat we ieder honderdduizend gld in de week te verteren hadden, dan lieten we een mooi jacht bouwen en zeilden allemaal naar het land van den Mikado, om daar eens te kijken.
Quote of Breitner, in a letter to Herman van der Weele, c. 1892-96; as cited in Meisjes in kimono. Schilderijen, tekeningen en foto's van George Hendrik Breitner (1857-1923) en zijn Japanse tijdgenoten, J.H.G. Bergsma & H. Shimoyama; Hotei Publishing, Leiden 2001, pp. 15-16
1890 - 1900

Beauty, Dreams, Country

“Tolerance? What does that mean? I am a very tolerant and hospitable person, like you. Would you accept 12 illegal immigrants moving into your flat? You would not! On top of that, they start to remove the wallpaper! Some of them would steal your wallet and brutalise your wife. You would not accept that! Consequently, we are hospitable, but we decide with whom we want to be.”

Marine Le Pen (1968) French lawyer and politician

SBS Interview with Mark Davis (8 May 2012) http://www.sbs.com.au/dateline/story/transcript/id/601463/n/Marine-Le-Pen

Personality

“When a Man has Married a Wife
He finds out whether
Her Knees & elbows are only
glued together.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1800–1803)
1800s

“One relative felt that the story of my grandmother should not have been revealed. My grandmother was the woman (in The Kitchen God's Wife) who had been raped, forced to be a concubine, and finally killed herself. My mother, though, got equally angry at the relative and said, "For so many years, I carried this shame on my back, and my mother suffered, because she couldn't say anything to anybody." And she said, "It's not too late; tell the world, tell the world what happened to her."”

Amy Tan (1952) American novelist

And I take her mandate to be the one that is in my heart, the one that I should follow.
SALON Interview (1995)

God, World, Suffering, Heart

“The moneylender and his wife," he said indifferently, jerking his head over his shoulder. "It is always the same in any revolution. The moneylenders are always the first to go.”

Christopher Wood (writer) (1935–2015) English writer

Wood, Christopher. "Terrible Hard", Says Alice. London: Constable. 1970. (chapter 6)

Jerk, Indifference

“My mother, my dad and I left Cuba when I was two [January, 1959]. Castro had taken control by then, and life for many ordinary people had become very difficult. My dad had worked [as a personal bodyguard for the wife of Cuban president Batista], so he was a marked man. We moved to Miami, which is about as close to Cuba as you can get without being there. It's a Cuba-centric society. I think a lot of Cubans moved to the US thinking everything would be perfect. Personally, I have to say that those early years were not particularly happy. A lot of people didn't want us around, and I can remember seeing signs that said: "No children. No pets. No Cubans." Things were not made easier by the fact that Dad had begun working for the US government. At the time he couldn't really tell us what he was doing, because it was some sort of top-secret operation. He just said he wanted to fight against what was happening back at home. [Estefan's father was one of the many Cuban exiles taking part in the ill-fated, anti-Castro Bay of Pigs invasion to overthrow dictator Fidel Castro. ] One night, Dad disappered. I think he was so worried about telling my mother he was going that he just left her a note. There were rumours something was happening back home, but we didn't really know where Dad had gone. It was a scary time for many Cubans. A lot of men were involved -- lots of families were left without sons and fathers. By the time we found out what my dad had been doing, the attempted coup had taken place, on April 17, 1961. Intitially he'd been training in Central America, but after the coup attempt he was captured and spent the next wo years as a political prisoner in Cuba. That was probably the worst time for my mother and me. Not knowing what was going to happen to Dad. I was only a kid, but I had worked out where my dad was. My mother was trying to keep it a secret, so she used to tell me Dad was on a farm. Of course, I thought that she didn't know what had really happened to him, so I used to keep up the pretence that Dad really was working on a farm. We used to do this whole pretending thing every day, trying to protect each other. Those two years had a terrible effect on my mother. She was very nervous, just going from church to church. Always carrying her rosary beads, praying her little heart out. She had her religion, and I had my music. Music was in our family. My mother was a singer, and on my father's side there was a violinist and a pianist. My grandmother was a poet.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

The [London] Sunday Times (November 17, 2006)
2007, 2008

Life, Men, Fate, Happiness

“The epithet should be the mistress of the substantive, never its lawful wife.”

Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897) French novelist

L'épithète doit être la maîtresse du substantif, jamais sa femme légitime.
Source: Notes sur la vie (published posthumously 1899), P. 3; translation p. 338.

Law

“My father loved us so much, but he's the kind of person that chokes you. He doesn't leave you your own pleasures. If you think or feel one way and he feels the other way, he won't accept it. My mother wanted to work. People wanted her to do movies, but he just wanted her to be at home, be a mother, be a wife, be this Venus, this planet he could land on anytime.”

Nastassja Kinski (1961) German actress

As quoted in Denise Worrell (1989), Icons: Intimate Portraits.

Love, People, Pleasure, Way

Quotes about wife page 7

Quotes about wife
page 7