There is no greater power in the world than the zest of a postmenopausal woman.

I suddenly realized that through no act of my own I had become biologically related to a new human being.

In this country, some people start being miserable about growing old while they are still young.

Our first and most pressing problem is how to do away with warfare as a method of solving conflicts between national groups or between groups within a society who have different views about how the society is to be run. If you look back, you will see that warfare was an invention, just as ways of handling government or taxes are inventions. You will see, too, that once people use an invention they go on using it until they find another which they think is superior.

Sisters, while they are growing up, tend to be very rivalrous and as young mothers they are given to continual rivalrous comparisons of their several children. But once the children grow older, sisters draw closer together and often, in old age, they become each other's chosen and most happy companions. In addition to their shared memories of childhood and of their relationship to each other's children, they share memories of the same home, the same homemaking style, and the same small prejudices about housekeeping that carry the echoes of their mother's voice.

For the human species to evolve, the conversation must deepen.

I don't consider my marriages as failures! It's idiotic to assume that because a marriage ends, it's failed.