Regardless of your age, you will always have adventures, unexpected joys and unexpected sorrows.

The problem that has no name-which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities-is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease.

I knew one thing. I did not want to be a mommy like mommy.

I never set out to write a book to change women's lives, to change history. It's like, 'Who, me?' Yes, me. I did it. And I'm not that different from other women. Maybe my power and glory was that I could speak my truth as a woman and it was the truth of every woman.

You have to say no to the old ways before you can begin to find the new yes you need.

Instead of fulfilling the promise of infinite orgasmic bliss, sex in the America of the feminine mystique is becoming a strangely joyless national compulsion, if not a contemptuous mockery.

Just as darkness is sometimes defined as the absence of light, so age is defined as the absence of youth.