“Can't is for pussies.”

“The way I look at it, women in the City are like first-generationimmigrants. You get off the boat, you keep your eyes down, work ashard as you can and do your damnest to ignore the taunts of ignorantnatives who hate you because you look different and you smelldifferent and because one day you might take their job. And you hope. You know it's probably not going to get that much better in your ownlifetime, but just the fact that you occupy the space, the fact thatthey had to put a Tampax dispenser in the toilet - all that makes iteasier for the women who come after you.... The females who comeafter us will scarcely give us a second thought, but they will walk onour bones.”

“Trying to be a man is a waste of a woman.”

“When he laughed, Roy's mouth revealed a Stonehenge of ancient teeth.”

“Women used to have time to make mince pies and had to fake orgasms. Now we can manage the orgasms, but we have to fake the mince pies. And they call this progress.”

“...Emily hit the Terrible Twos and I bought a book called Toddler Taming. It was a revelation. The advice on how to deal with small angry immature people who have no idea of limits and were constantly testing their mother applied perfectly to my boss. Instead of treating him as a superior, I began handling him as though he were a tricky small boy. Whenever he was about to do something naughty, I would do my best to distract him; if I wanted him to do something, I always made it look like it was his idea.”

“Sharon had seen a penis, but it was her brother's so it didn't count. Carol was the only girl in our group who had touched a real one....Carol said the penis felt like eyelid skin. Could that be right? For weeks after she told us, I would brush a finger over the skin above my eye and I would marvel that something that was made of boy could be so silky and fine, like tissue paper.”