So far it has been assumed that the only pregnancies which are aborted are accidental ones and the only foetuses destroyed those whose mothers could not bear the thought of their becoming children. In a just world this would be the case, but the world is far from just. Too many women are forced to abort by poverty, by their menfolk, by their parents. Poverty has many faces; it may be the poverty of the young, the unmarried, the student, the unemployed, the female or a combination of these.

Loneliness is never more cruel than when it is felt in close propinquity with someone who has ceased to communicate.

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.

Common morality now treats childbearing as an aberration. There are practically no good reasons left for exercising one's fertility.

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.

Many a housewife staring at the back of her husband's newspaper, or listening to his breathing in bed is lonelier than any spinster in a rented room.

A garden is the best alternative therapy.