Power is the ability not to have to please.

those who despair of life are not long for it.

Powerful people get away with things. That's one way to demonstrate their difference from the rest of us.

Myth, legend, and ritual ... function to maintain a status quo. That makes them singularly bad in coping with change, indeed counterproductive, for change is the enemy of myth.

Humor is an antidote to isolation.

We are in a double bind. We are expected to feel inferior not only as women, but because we are old.

Today, what most people live in, or with, is the less-than-nuclear family. Working fathers are absent from home during most of the day, the children are schooled outside it, and practically all women who work for money must go outside to earn their living.