Roman Catholicism: a hundred million people bowing down before a flesh-hating, elderly celibate.
Barbara EhrenreichJames Bond in his Sean Connery days ... was the first well-known bachelor on the American scene who was not a drifter or a degenerate and did not eat out of cans.
Barbara EhrenreichThe fact is that heterosexual sex for most people is in no way free of the power relations between men and women.
Barbara EhrenreichIn matters of the heart as well, a certain level of negativity and suspicion is universally recommended. You may try to project a thoroughly positive outlook in order to attract a potential boyfriend, but you are also advised to Google him.
Barbara EhrenreichPeople tend to judge presidents on how the economy performs, and yet we don't expect them to have the power to do much about it. Or we don't want them to exercise that power, if they were to have it.
Barbara EhrenreichThe question is why one should be so inwardly preoccupied at all. Why not reach out to others in love and solidarity or peer into the natural world for some glimmer of understanding? Why retreat into anxious introspection when, as Emerson might have said, there is a vast world outside to explore? Why spend so much time working on oneself when there is so much real work to be done?
Barbara Ehrenreich