Marilyn Yalom Quotes

For a French person, lack of desire in someone is really seen as a defect.

In France, you have 900 years of romantic love going back to the troubadours and minstrels that wrote stories of Lancelot and Guinevere. You have gallantry at the highest level.

There is a belief that love has its own justification, that it should be experienced as passionately as possible. The French have a wonderful expression, amour passion, which is the ultimate.

How many times have I heard in France of women who have been married for many years and the husband has had mistresses and you ask, "Why does she put up with it?" Because she loves him! Love is justification for so many things Americans would never put up with.

We live in a society where we don't want to commit to another person for life. We do at the moment that we marry, but less and less people marry. We marry later, we marry less. On some level of the unconscious, we know there is less of a chance that a marriage will be life-long.

I think people are more likely to think it's better to find something new. That mentality has affected all of our thinking.