If knowledge is power, clandestine knowledge is power squared; it can be withheld, exchanged, and leveraged.

When a family is free of abuse and oppression, it can be the place where we share our deepest secrets and stand the most exposed, a place where we learn to feel distinct without being better, - and sacrifice for others without losing ourselves.

America is a nation fundamentally ambivalent about its children, often afraid of its children, and frequently punitive toward its children.

Although Freud said happiness is composed of love and work, reality often forces us to choose love or work.

I find it profoundly symbolic that I am appearing before a committee of fifteen men who will report to a legislative body of one hundred men because of a decision handed down by a court comprised of nine men--on an issue that affects millions of women.... I have the feeling that if men could get pregnant, we wouldn't be struggling for this legislation. If men could get pregnant, maternity benefits would be as sacrosanct as the G.I. Bill.

It's smart to be friends with one's sex partner but dumb to have sex with one's friends.

The risk for a woman who considers her helpless children her "job" is that the children's growth toward self-sufficiency may be experienced as a refutation of the mother's indispensability, and she may unconsciously sabotage their growth as a result.