Marriage Quote by Gale Gordon

Domestic bliss, in Gale Gordon's telling, is less candlelight and more clutter: a home so full of books (and dogs) that the humans become negotiable. The joke lands because it flips the usual hierarchy. Instead of moving books to make room for life, life gets resized around the objects that actually carry meaning. That exaggeration is classic actor-comic timing: a setup about reading, a punchline about real estate, then the extra beat - "And we have our dogs" - like an afterthought that suddenly explains why the place is truly unmanageable. The dogs are the comic garnish that also humanizes the couple; this isn't austere, monastic book worship, it's affectionate chaos.

Gordon came up in an era when the ideal American home was marketed as orderly, spacious, and efficient - the postwar promise of square footage and clean lines. His quip gently rebels against that mid-century fantasy. Books aren't just decor or self-improvement props; they're physical proof of curiosity, taste, obsession. They don't sit quietly. They spread, they multiply, they demand shelves, then rooms, then a bigger life to contain them. The subtext is a kind of proud self-indulgence: we are the sort of people who choose stories, ideas, and animal companionship over minimalism or social polish.

It's also a performance of marriage as camaraderie. "My wife and I" signals a shared appetite, a private world where the punchline isn't conflict but complicity: two people happily outnumbered by what they love.