I was sent to a nice Church of England girls' school and at that time, after university, a woman was expected to become a teacher, a nurse or a missionary - prior to marriage.

Well, you know, the definition of second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.

Seeing unhappiness in the marriage of friends, I was content to have chosen music and laughter as a substitute for a husband.

How do you explain the bond between man and wife? Well, for one thing, it's private. What people do in their own marriage is their own business.

My first marriage was totally unsuitable and shouldn't have happened. It was a whirlwind, rebound thing. I was 23 or 24 - a baby.

Above all, we must have great respect for these people who also suffer and who want to find their own way of correct living. On the other hand, to create a legal form of a kind of homosexual marriage, in reality, does not help these people.

I find it disturbing that the media keeps referring to my marriage, since I got divorced in 1979. But the media never wants to let me forget.

My marriage had been impulsive. That marriage should have been short-lived instead of the 23 years it spanned.

The Amateur Marriage grew out of the reflection that of all the opportunities to show differences in character, surely an unhappy marriage must be the richest.

Well, marriage doesn't function in the way it used to in terms of deciding our fate, but it's in our heads, and it determines a lot of our actions. Like, right now, if you think about gay marriage - and they just started having the first gay marriages in New York - it shows what a potent idea marriage remains for people.