Most people die in improvised circumstances of harassment and confusion, whether in a hospital or out of it.

Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace, and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark.

Security is when everything is settled when nothing can happen to you; security is the denial of life.

The principle of the brotherhood of man is narcissistic for the grounds for that love have always been the assumption that we ought to realize that we are the same the whole world over.

Too many women are forced to abort by poverty, by their menfolk, by their parents. A choice is only possible if there are genuine alternatives.

Lies are vile things, with a horrible life of their own. They contaminate the truth that surrounds them.

The few men who do a hand’s turn around the house expect gratitude and recognition, so sure are they that, though it is their dirt, it is not their job.

Thirty years on, femininity is still compulsory for women – and has become an option for men – while genuine femaleness remains grotesque to the point of obscenity. Meanwhile, the price of the small advances we have made towards sexual equality has been the denial of femaleness as any kind of a distinguishing character.

In ‘The Female Eunuch’ I argued that motherhood should not be treated as a substitute career; now I would argue that motherhood should be regarded as a genuine career option, that is to say, as paid work and, as such, as an alternative to other paid work. What this would mean is that every woman who decides to have a child would be paid enough to raise that child in decent circumstances.

I didn’t fight to get women out from behind vacuum cleaners to get them onto the board of Hoover.