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.

For instance, in group therapy, I'll have people stand up, show off, give a speech about themselves as though they've just died and have to give a eulogy. Even with this explicit permission - even an order - to say something nice about themselves, this is the hardest thing in the world for people to do. They'd rather take their clothes off.

I'm sure it's why I'm such an odd duck in my feminist generation, because I've always been equally fair to men.

Blaming mother is just a negative way of clinging to her still.

When I stopped seeing my mother with the eyes of a child, I saw the woman who helped me give birth to myself.

Inside every adult male is a denied little boy.

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.