Much of the ill-tempered railing against women that has characterized the popular writing of the last two years is a half-heartedattempt to find a way back to a more balanced relationship between our biological selves and the world we have built. So women are scolded both for being mothers and for not being mothers, for wanting to eat their cake and have it too, and for not wanting to eat their cake and have it too.

human beings seem to hold on more tenaciously to a cultural identity that is learned through suffering than to one that has been acquired through pleasure and delight.

Men have always been afraid that women could get along without them.

You can never have a relationship with someone whose smell you don't like.

Everyone needs to have access both to grandparents and grandchildren in order to be a full human being.

The differences between the two sexes is one of the important conditions upon which we have built the many varieties of human culture that give human beings dignity and stature.

We know of no culture that has said, articulately, that there is no difference between men and women except in the way they contribute to the creation of the next generation.