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.

Sade has a curious ability to render every aspect of sexuality suspect, so that we see how the chaste kiss of the sentimental lover differs only in degree from the vampirish love-bite that draws blood, we understand that a disinterested caress is only quantitatively different from a disinterested flogging.

For hours, for days, for years, she had wandered endlessly within herself but never met anybody, nobody.

He was a lovely man in many ways. But he kept on insisting on forgiving me when there was nothing to forgive.

It's every woman's tragedy, that, after a certain age, she looks like a female impersonator. Mind you, we've known some lovely female impersonators, in our time.

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

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