[On the Barbie doll:] Her values, while somewhat Yuppified, are not so bad. Look at GI Joe. His only wardrobe is fatigues, he spends all his time trying to kill people, or getting his own innards splashed across the landscape. His big hobby is death.

Men have jobs, while women have Roles: Mother, Wife, Goddess, Temptress, etc. That's probably why it's so hard for women to rewrite the rules. You're not just changing a job description, but an ancient myth. You're revising the Bible, Poetry, Legend and Psychoanalytic Scripture.

Freedom is much more complicated than servitude.

What we've done, it seems to me, is allow women to get older, but not to age.

Technology has allowed the world of men in our society to separate itself from the sight and the sounds of killing; from the horror of it, but not from the killing. It must be easy to kill from a roomful of fluorescent lights and wash-and-wear shirts.

Guilt implanted at a tender age is not easy to destroy. A weed, it sprouts in unexpected places.

Smell is the closest thing human beings have to a time machine.