Ironically, women who acquire power are more likely to be criticized for it than are the men who have always had it.

Women, I believe, search for fellow beings who have faced similar struggles, conveyed them in ways a reader can transform into her own life, confirmed desires the reader had hardly acknowledge-desires that now seem possible. Women catch courage from the women whose lives and writings they read, and women call the bearer of that courage friend. [p. 138]

Cynic' is the sentimentalist's name for the realist.

as the years go on a sense of deep patience comes over one; one seems to know the virtue of ripeness, and the danger of rushing events.

A dog is the only exercise machine you cannot decide to skip when you don't feel like it.

As long as women are isolated one from the other, not allowed to offer other women the most personal accounts of their lives, they will not be part of any narratives of their own…women will be staving off destiny and not inviting or inventing or controlling it.

Ironically, women who acquire power are more likely to be criticized for it than are the men who have always had it.