“Men are attracted to beauty because it indicates health and youth—no point mating with a sickly woman who won’t be around to raise the children.”

“In choosing a mate, don't pick the tallest and most handsome or the most beautiful. Don't choose one just because that person raises your physical passions. Look for the person who is good from within, the one with substance and worth.”

“What you discovered about yourself in raising children wasn't always agreeable or attractive.”

“Men who read it [beauty pornography] don't do so because they want women who look like that. The attraction of what they are holding is that it is not a woman, but a two-dimensional woman-shaped blank. The appeal of the material is not the fantasy that the model will come to life; it is precisely that she will not, ever. Her coming to life would ruin the vision. It is not about life.Ideal beauty is ideal because it does not exist; The action lies in the gap between desire and gratification. Women are not perfect beauties without distance. That space, in a consumer culture, is a lucrative one. The beauty myth moves for men as a mirage, its power lies in its ever-receding nature. When the gap is closed, the lover embraces only his own disillusion.”

“The fact that this was a fairly accurate portrait of my own mother is a quick indicator of how difficult it once was for me to tell the difference between myself and the powerful woman who had raised me.”

“Anyone can live contentedly in circumstances of ease and comfort, health and well-being gratification and felicity; but to remain happy and contented in the face of difficulty, hardship and the onslaught of disease and sickness-this is an indication of nobility.”