Drosselmeier had unwittingly exposed himself to an overdose of reality, and it had destroyed his reason.

Mother is in herself a concrete denial of the idea of sexual pleasure since her sexuality has been placed at the service of reproductive function alone. She is the perpetually violated passive principle; her autonomy has been sufficiently eroded by the presence within her of the embryo she brought to term. Her unthinking ability to reproduce, which is her pride, is, since it is beyond choice, not a specific virtue of her own.

The notion of a universality of human experience is a confidence trick and the notion of a universality of female experience is a clever confidence trick.

The kind of power mothers have is enormous.

There are lots of things that you can brush under the carpet about yourself until you're faced with somebody whose needs won't be put off.

Nothing is a matter of life and death except life and death.

To ride a bicycle is in itself some protection against superstitious fears, since the bicycle is the product of pure reason applied to motion. Geometry at the service of man! Give me two spheres and a straight line and I will show you how far I can take them. Voltaire himself might have invented the bicycle, since it contributes so much to man’s welfare and nothing at all to his bane. Beneficial to the health, it emits no harmful fumes and permits only the most decorous speeds. How can a bicycle ever be an implement of harm?