Marriage Quote by Richard Pryor

Pryor turns matrimony into a pratfall with a bruise underneath. The line lands because it’s structured like optimism but delivered with the weary logic of a man who’s watched his own good intentions detonate. “Having a home and a wife” is a deliberately old-fashioned inventory of stability, almost Norman Rockwell in its simplicity. Coming from Pryor, that domestic postcard reads less like nostalgia than a dare: imagine me in the role everyone says will fix you.

The pivot is the killer: “No one can ever be married too many times.” It’s a comic reversal of the sanctimony that usually surrounds marriage. Pryor treats it like a repeated experiment, not a sacrament. That’s the intent: disarm the audience with a joke that sounds breezy, then slip in the confession that the problem isn’t marriage itself but the self that keeps showing up inside it.

The subtext is both accountability and deflection. “Maybe if I keep trying I’ll get it right one day” admits failure without naming its causes, framing serial marriage as perseverance rather than wreckage. It’s the classic Pryor move: use humor to negotiate shame in public, to make chaos narratable. The laugh is a pressure valve; the real subject is longing-for repair, for ordinary life, for a version of himself that can stay.

Context sharpens the edge. Pryor’s personal history included multiple marriages and public turmoil, and his comedy often mined the space where American ideals (the nuclear home, the respectable man) collide with addiction, trauma, and fame. The line isn’t pro-marriage or anti-marriage; it’s Pryor confessing that even after the punchlines, he still wants the corny ending and suspects he’s the hardest part of the script.