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.

I believe I belong to the last literary generation, the last generation, that is, for whom books are a religion.

The sexuality doesn't end. It really doesn't. You're sexual your whole life, if you're a sexual person.

A man assumes that a woman's refusal is just part of a game. Or, at any rate, a lot of men assume that. When a man says no, it's no. When a woman says no, it's yes, or at least maybe. There is even a joke to that effect. And little by little, women begin to believe in this view of themselves.

There were 117 psychoanalysts on the Pan Am flight to Vienna and I'd been treated by at least six of them. And married a seventh.

You don't get to choose what you get famous for and you don't get to control which of your life's many struggles gets to stand for you.

Gossip is the opiate of the oppressed.