Never joke with the press. Irony does not translate into newsprint.

Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world.

Any system was a straightjacket if you insisted on adhering to it so totally and humorlessly.

The absolute bedrock of our independence is having control over our own bodies. You cannot be independent if the government or someone else says whether or not you can use birth control. Unless you're in charge of your body, you're not in charge of anything. I think that's really the bottom line of feminism.

There is simply no dignified way for a woman to live alone. Oh, she can get along financially perhaps (though not nearly as well as a man), but emotionally she is never left in peace. Her friends, her family, her fellow workers never let her forget that her husbandlessness, her childlessness - her selfishness, in short - is a reproach to the American way of life.

The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past.

I had been a feminist all my life, but the big problem was how to make your feminism jibe with you unappeasable hunger for male bodies.