“You guys are not leaving me out there. They're going to talk books and sex. And the books are about sex. Who knew women were so damn chatty about sex? Men don't do that. We just look at a girl, announce we did her, and everyone moves on.”

“JANE: What to do when it is that time in your girl child's life:1. Sit down calmly and explain sex to her?2. Buy her a book, video, or CD that gives her the details?3. Buy her condoms and put her on the pill?Or do as many mothers before you did—just stick your head in the sand and hope she joins a convent.Of course these days your child may know more about sex than you did at her age, what with in-school health lessons, and out-of-school R-rated movies easily accessed on the TV, not to mention the Starr Report!In the days of fairy tales, sex was dangerous because so many women died in childbirth. Today sex is again dangerous because of diseases like AIDS. So what do we say?”

“I was sixteen and my mother was about to throw me out of the house forever, for breaking a very big rule, even bigger than the forbidden books. The rule was not just No Sex, but definitely No Sex With Your Own Sex.”

“I hate women like that. They're so desperate for the attention of men that they'd willingly betray and harm members of their own sex. And we claim men cannot think with their brains! At least men are direct about it.”

“...Gabrielle and Elaine seemed to hit it off by talking books — something trending about a very young billionaire and his obsession with an even younger woman...and sex. Lots of erotic sex scenes in the book like apparently on every page...Who has time? Why even read about sex in a book when you can have it instead? I don't get that. And billionaires in their twenties? I mentally shook my head and pretended to care. I'm such a bastard.”

“Huddled in her mink in the Kansas City airport, she had a vision of women writing about sex as openly as male writers, but quite, quite differently. Some women would treat sex much as men did,as conquest, as adventure--in a way as McCarthy had. Other women would treat female sexuality far less romantically then men who did not consider themselves romantics, like Hemingway, were wont to. The earth would not move, no, there would be more biology and less theatrics. Women had less ego involvement in sex than men did, but far more at stake economically.”