You’re afraid to be close to women. Because it’s not masculine to be close to women. The last time you were close to a woman, you were a child.
I don’t know if fury can compete with necessity as the mother of invention, but I recommend it.
When the past dies, there is mourning, but when the future dies our imaginations are compelled to carry it on.
Democracy is mob rule with income taxes.
During the first suffragist wave in this nation, women were possessions, like a table or a chair. So violence toward them was quite condoned. The attitude has diminished, but it’s still there.
A lot of my generation are living out the un-lived lives of our mothers.
Some women and men seem to need each other.
In retrospect, perhaps the biggest reason my mother was cared for but not helped for twenty years was the simplest: Her functioning was not that necessary to the world.
They would say well there’s always been wars, men have always beaten women. But it isn’t true in all cultures. It doesn’t have to be true. And the first step is imaging.
What would happen if we listened to children as much as we talked to them?
For much of the female half of the world, food is the first signal of our inferiority. It lets us know that our own families may consider female bodies to be less deserving, less needy, less valuable.
You’re a unique person. You should do what you’re suited to do. We all should. It’s the only way to be happy. That pressure is all outside. It’s external.
There is always one true inner voice. Trust it.
People waste more time waiting for someone to take charge of their lives than they do in any other pursuit.
Nature doesn’t move in a straight line, and as part of nature, neither do we.
Of course, we can change. We’re very adaptable. But it takes a while.
Proust’s tea cake has nothing on one hour in a college dorm.
Power in this country is often like hemophilia; it passes through women and then men get it.
I think one of the great innovations of sexual harassment law was that it did not use the word “consent.” It used the word “welcome.”
Language can’t solve everything, of course, but it does carry our dreams and our ideas.