unlike a disappointing marriage, disappointing motherhood cannot be terminated by divorce.

[On her mastectomy:] Pity is delicious. I was crazy about the pity I got. It was the best kind, too. I did not get, nor did I want, the drooling, mewing kind. I preferred something more restrained but deep-felt. Quality pity.

[On her mastectomy:] Fact is, I'm the same car I always was, except now I have a dent in my fender.

The notion that the maternal wish and the activity of mothering are instinctive or biologically predestined is baloney.

Scratch most feminists and underneath there is a woman who longs to be a sex object. The difference is that is not all she wants to be.

Biological possibility and desire are not the same as biological need. Women have childbearing equipment. For them to choose not to use the equipment is no more blocking what is instinctive than it is for a man who, muscles or no, chooses not to be a weightlifter.

Disease may score a direct hit on only one member of a family, but shrapnel tears the flesh of the others.