“Stella nodded. She was so glad Janet had found a new doctor after all that suffering. One thing that had astounded her was how the women—smart, educated, strong women—never wanted to bother their caregivers. They silently suffered, trying to be low-maintenance patients despite their horrifying experiences.”

“But that was another Mildred so deep inside this one, and so bothered, really bothered, that the two women had never met.”

“I always had the sense with her that she didn't suffer fools gladly but that life was taking great pains to show her how.”

“Looking at his face, it sometimes came to her that all women had been cursed from the cradle; all, in one fashion or another, being given the same cruel destiny, born to suffer the weight of men. Frank claimed that she got it all wrong side up: it was men who suffered because they had to put up with the ways of women—and this from the time that they were born until the day they died.”

“All women speak two languages:
the language of men
and the language of silent suffering.
 Some women speak a third,
the language of queens.”

“Whenever an occasion arose in which she needed an opinion on something in the wider world, she borrowed her husband's. If this had been all there was to her, she wouldn't have bothered anyone, but as is so often the case with such women, she suffered from an incurable case of of pretentiousness. Lacking any internalized values of her own, such people can arrive at a standpoint only by adopting other people's standards or views. The only principle that governs their minds is the question "How do I look?”