In a great gasp, puts her head in her hands again and cries as if her throat were a cave, as if the howling winds came from her belly, she cries like a storm that will never end.

Habit is a good thing for the human race. ... You have to spend so much energy just getting through the day when you have no habits that you don't have any left for productive labor.

Anyone determined to find another person or group inferior can always find whole lists of grounds that demonstrate inferiority because we are all inferior to the ideals of humanness we have erected.

Men's need to dominate women may be based in their own sense of marginality or emptiness; we do not know its root, and men are making no effort to discover it.

Women are afraid in a world in which almost half the population bears the guise of the predator, in which no factor - age, dress, or color - distinguishes a man who will harm a woman from one who will not.

I'd discovered you never know yourself until you're tested and that you don't even know you're being tested until afterwards, and that in fact there isn't anyone giving the test except yourself.

Oh, God, why don't I remember that a little chaos is good for the soul?