Sarah Dunn

“If you're going to be married for a long time, I think you'll have a fair number of moments where you question things, no matter how good your marriage is.”

“She never got a chance to fall out of love, to do it properly, slowly and thoroughly, and the result was he was like a phantom limb. Gone but still there. And like a true phantom limb, the preponderance of feelings associated with him were painful.”

“I'm too busy being the bad guy.” It was one of those things that get said in a marriage, something that starts out as a genuine compliment but turns into a criticism without either party noticing or caring all that much.”

“For me, the word 'housewife,' because of, like, the 'Real Housewives' - I don't think housewife really means what it used to mean. To me, it's been a little bit overused to the point that it's not as loaded as it might be. I feel like in a perfect world we would say 'American Mom with Kids,' or something like that. 'Mom with Small Children.'”

“A show is like it's own thing... it's a creation from so many people's talent and so much energy.”

“Love makes you deluded.”

“I think that our culture is doing something to women - let's say women in their late 30s and 40s and probably even 50s, - where they really are expected to keep this insane level of fitness and youth. I find that just a real waste of women's lives. I really do think that.”

“Ordinarily, I am the person who falls in love quickly and somewhat inappropriately and then goes on to destroy what is a good thing. That's always been my style. So, you know: I get it. And I feel right now the way I imagine all those guys felt with me. And I have to say, for the first time in my life, I feel something approaching compassion for them.”

“Betsy hadn't had sex, actual; sex-sex, full sex, in two hundred and fifty-three days. She decided on her thirty-seventh birthday that she wouldn't sleep with anyone unless it was in the context of a committed relationship which had some sort of future, and she was only gradually coming to the realization of what happens when a woman her age makes a decision like that: she never has sex again.”

“I don't really go on diets because when I go on a diet, my brain stops working. I mean, really, that's all I think about: what I can eat, what I can't eat. I sort of decided that's not what I want to do with my time on this planet. It's not it.”

“She knew that what she was going through was nothing special, just garden-variety heartbreak, the sort of thing that poets and novelists had been writing about for hundreds of years, but she also knew, from those same books, that there were people who never recover form it, ones who go on through life beset by a dim and painful longing.”

“I really tried to avoid living in L.A. for as long as I can.”

“Writing novels is so much more satisfying than writing television.”

“I love being married. I love my house; I love my kids. I love all of it.”

“Why does anyone stay in an unhappy relationship? Because people do. They do it all the time. And the truth is, when you’re in it, when you’re up to your neck in the everyday part of life with another human being, sometimes you don’t exactly notice how bad things really are. It’s not always as apparent as it would seem. Unhappiness, when it involves another person, can be like that line from The Sun Also Rises about going bankrupt, how it happens two ways: gradually, and then suddenly.”

“I really don't think you need to be 40 and have three kids and have a body of an 18-year-old.”

“I am really bad at being a mom. I think it's hard for me to be a mom. I do my best. I am not the poster child for being a mother, I will say that. I wish I was.”

“If you really want to stay married to the person you're currently married to, I would not suggest trying an open marriage.”

“Writing a novel, when it's all going well, it's wonderful. You're lost in the world, and you have a relationship with your own mind. Also, as a novelist, you don't have to yell at anyone. But being an executive producer of a TV show, all you have is people coming at you with questions, and you're making decisions, decisions, decisions.”