Marriage is a noose.

Marriage . . . is not a love affair; it is an ordeal. (92)

Marriage, if one will face the truth, is an evil, but a necessary evil.

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

Politics is a desperate business.

Marriage is not a simple love affair, it’s an ordeal, and the ordeal is the sacrifice of ego to a relationship in which two have become one.

I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.

Marriage is to me apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious capitulation, acceptance of defeat.

Every married person he knew seemed desperate to chivvy others into matrimony, no matter how poor an advertisement they themselves were for the institution.

Desperate affairs require desperate measures.

Marriage is like the Middle East, isn't it? There's no solution.

Of all serious things, marriage is the most ludicrous.

Of all the horrid brutalities of our age, I know of none so horrid as those that are sanctioned and defended by marriage. Night after night, there are thousands of rapes committed, under cover of this accursed license; and millions— yes, I say it boldly, knowing whereof I speak— millions of poor, heartbroken, suffering wives are compelled to minister to the lechery of insatiable husbands, when every instinct of body and sentiment of soul revolts in loathing and disgust... The world has got to be startled from this pretense into realizing that there is nothing else now existing among pretendedly enlightened nations, except marriage, that invests men with the right to debauch women, sexually, against their wills, yet marriage is held to be synonymous with morality! I say, eternal damnation, sink such morality!

You could say that I am desperate — because I am. In a world that both desexualizes and hypersexualizes transfeminine people and treats us like street garbage, I am desperate to find companionship and touch.