What a joy it is to dance and sing!

Women's sexy underwear is a minor but significant growth industry of late-twentieth-century Britain in the twilight of capitalism.

Vengeful as nature herself, she loves her children only in order to devour them better and if she herself rips her own veils of self-deceit, Mother perceives in herself untold abysses of cruelty as subtle as it is refined.

I will tell you what Jeanne was like. She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.

How far does a pretence of feeling, maintained with absolute conviction, become authentic?

It is, perhaps, a better thing to be valued only as an object of passion than never to be valued at all.

And, oh God, in my misspent youth as a housewife, I, too, used to bake bread, in those hectic and desolating days just prior to the woman's movement, when middle-class women were supposed to be wonderful wives and mothers, gracious hostesses.... I used to feel so womanly when I was baking my filthy bread.