“What people want is perfection," said the man. "In themselves." "But they need the steps to it to be pointed out," said the woman. "In a simple order," said the man. "With encouragement," said the woman. "And a positive attitude.”

“What’s with her?” says the painter. “She’s mad because she’s a woman,” Jon says. This is something I haven’t heard for years, not since high school. Once it was a shaming thing to say, and crushing to have it said about you, by a man. It implied oddness, deformity, sexual malfunction. I go to the living room doorway. “I’m not mad because I’m a woman,” I say. “I’m mad because you’re an asshole.”

“The male frog, in mating season," said Crake, "makes as much noise as it can. The females are attracted to the male frog with the biggest, deepest voice because it suggests a more powerful frog, one with superior genes. Small male frogs - it's been documented - discover that if they position themselves in empty drainpipes, the pipe acts as a voice amplifier, and the small frog appears much larger than it really is.""So?""So that's what art is, for the artist," said Crake. "An empty drainpipe. An amplifier. A stab at getting laid.""Your analogy falls down when it comes to female artists," said Jimmy. "They're not in it to get laid. They'd gain no biological advantage from amplifying themselves, since potential mates would be deterred rather than attracted by this sort of amplification. Men aren't frogs, they don't want women who are ten times bigger than them.""Female artists are biologically confused," said Crake.”

“Those walls and bars are there for a reason,' said Crake. ' Not to keep us out, but to keep them in. Mankind needs barriers in both cases”

“A man is just a woman's strategy for making other women.”

“Come away with me, he said, we will live on a desert island. I said, I am a desert island. It was not what he had in mind.”

“We still think of a powerful man as a born leader and a powerful woman as an anomaly.”