“Scratch most feminists and underneath there is a woman who longs to be a sex object, the difference is that is not all she longs to be.”

“Women have childbearing equipment. 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 weight lifter. ”

“She went out and took a last long look at the shabby little library. She knew she would never see it again. Eyes changed after they looked at new things. If in the years to be she were to come back, her new eyes might make everything seem different from the way she saw it now. The way it was now was the way she wanted to remember it.”

“Immorality sanctified by tradition is still immorality.”

“Francie looked at her legs. They were long, slender, and exquisitely molded. She wore the sheerest of flawless silk stockings, and expensively made high-heeled pumps shod her beautifully arched feet. "Beautiful legs, then, is the secret of being a mistriss," concluded Francie. She looked down at her own long thin legs. "I'll never make it, I guess." Sighing , she resigned herself to a sinless life.”

“Most women had the one thing in common: they had great pain when they gave birth to their children. This should make a bond that held them all together; it should make them love and protect each other against the man-world. But it was not so. It seemed like their great birth pains shrank their hearts and their souls. They stuck together for only one thing: to trample on some other woman... whether it was by throwing stones or by mean gossip. It was the only kind of loyalty they seemed to have. Men were different. They might hate each other but they stuck together against the world and against any woman who would ensnare one of them.”

“Francie of course became an outsider shunned by all because of her stench. But she had grown accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and being considered different. She did not suffer to much.”