Ordinary women attempt to change our bodies to resemble a pornographic ideal. Ordinary women construct a false self and come to hate this self.

The mind can forget what the body, defined by each breath, subject to the heart beating, does not.

In the system of chivalry, men protect women against men. This is not unlike the protection relationship which [organized crime] established with small businesses in the early part of this century. Indeed, chivalry is an age-old protection racket which depends for its existence on rape.

... This is the paradox of vision: Sharp perception softens our existence in the world.

War starts in the mind, not in the body.

How many small decisions accumulate to form a habit? What a multitude of decisions, made by others, in other times, must shape our lives now.

Before a secret is told, one can often feel the weight of it in the atmosphere.