“Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but ... life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”

“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”

“Over and over again, stories in women's magazines insist that women can know fulfillment only at the moment of giving birth to a child. They deny the years when she can no longer look forward to giving birth, even if she repeats the act over and over again. In the feminine mystique, there is no other way for a woman to dream of creation or of the future. There is no other way she can even dream about herself, except as her children's mother, her husband's wife.”

“Giving birth is little more than a set of muscular contractions granting passage of a child. Then the mother is born.”

“Giving birth is like taking your lower lip and forcing it over your head.”

“Nothing is lost that we do not first see as lost. Visions born of fear give birth to our failing.Visions born of hope give birth to our success.What is possible lives within us, and it only remains for us to discover it.”