Every woman knows that, regardless of all her other achievements, she is a failure if she is not beautiful.

Yet if a woman never lets herself go, how will she ever know how far she might have got? If she never takes off her high-heeled shoes, how will she ever know how far she could walk or how fast she could run?

Despite a lifetime of service to the cause of sexual liberation, I have never caught venereal disease, which makes me feel rather like an Arctic explorer who has never had frostbite.

Awareness of time as flying has some advantages; it precludes boredom, for one thing. It matters little that younger people find older people boring or slow. Older people have a right to resist being rushed, to stand and stare at the fragile world that has become so unspeakably dear to them. For the lucky ones, who will not have to leave while they are still in love with life, there will come a later time when that passion too will fade, but while one is still possessed by that great tenderness, it must be yielded to.

Bras are a ludicrous invention; but if you make bralessness a rule, you're just subjecting yourself to yet another repression.

I find that those men who are personally most polite to women, who call them angels and all that, cherish in secret the greatest contempt for them.

Human beings have an unalienable right to invent themselves; when that right is pre-empted it is called brain-washing.