Marriage Quotes in The World According to Garp

How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)

Quote #1

He wrote Helen that a young writer needs desperately to live with someone and he had decided that he wanted to live with her; even marry her, he offered. (6.55)

Garp's early approach to marriage is immature, to say the least. He should just thank his lucky stars that he ends up with a woman as cool as Helen.

Quote #2

In the case of Garp and Helen, they hardly knew each other but they had their hunches—and in their stubborn, deliberate ways they fell in love with each other sometime after they had married. (7.12)

Listen kids, we wouldn't recommend marrying anyone before falling in love with them first, but it seems to work out okay here.

Quote #3

He would always call her "the wisest of my life's decisions." He made some unwise decisions, he would admit; but in the first five years of his marriage to Helen, he was unfaithful to her only once—and it was brief. (7.117)

Although Garp has no shortage of praise for Helen, you can already see the cracks in the surface. Do you really think that it's an achievement to wait five years before starting your first serious affair?