The debt of gratitude we owe our mother and father goes forward, not backward. What we owe our parents is the bill presented to us by our children.

Do women dress for men or women? I’ve always wondered why that eternally provocative question is put in terms of approval - as if the heart of the matter, the answer, were indeed a question of approval by either sex. But the question is never satisfactorily answered because it is incorrectly posed. It’s disapproval, the fear of it, that motivates most women, and with disapproval it doesn’t matter where it comes from.

Sexuality is the great field of battle between biology and society.

The older I get...the more of my mother I see in myself.

To say something nice about themselves, this is the hardest thing in the world for people to do.

Inside every adult male is a denied little boy.

All my writing has been an effort to sort out the paradoxes of my life.