“She was so intelligent that she could think herself into beauty. Intelligence...they don't talk about it much, the poets, but when a woman is intelligent and passionate and good...”

“The woman who thinks she is intelligent demands equal rights with men. A woman who is intelligent does not.”

“A real woman can compliment and celebrate another woman's beauty, intelligence, passion, sex appeal, and creativity without compromise because a real woman understands that when she lifts her sisters up, it takes nothing away from her and she elevates herself in the process.”

“She will try to find the nice way to exercise intelligence. But intelligence is not ladylike. Intelligence is full of excesses. Rigorous intelligene abhors sentimentality, and women must be sentimental to value the dreadful silliness of the men around them. Morbid intelligence abhors the cheery sunlight of positive thinking and eternal sweetness; and women must be sunlight and cheery and sweet, or the woman could not bribe her way with smiles through a day. Wild intelligence abhors any narrow world; and the world of women must stay narrow, or the woman is an outlaw. No woman could be Nietzsche or Rimbaud without ending up in a whorehouse or lobotomized. Any vital intelligence has passionate questions, aggressive answers; but women cannot be explorers; there can be no Lewis or Clark of the female mind.”

“I think of the thrill of an intelligent woman talking just to me.”

“I imagine that the intelligent people are the ones so intelligent that they don't even need or want to look 'intelligent' anymore.”