“The prose poem for me becomes a kind of chamber with no way out… a kind of hunt, because what is hunt but a breathing thing caught inside the house or the body or the box without the possibility of an exit?”

“The first treatise on the interior of the body, which is to say, the treatise that gave the body an interior , written by Henri De Mondeville in the fourteenth century, argues that the body is a house, the house of the soul, which like any house can only be maintained as such by constant surveillance of its openings. The woman’s body is seen as an inadequate enclosure because its boundaries are convoluted. While it is made of the same material as a man’s body, it has ben turned inside out. Her house has been disordered, leaving its walls full of openings. Consequently, she must always occupy a second house, a building to protect her soul. Gradually this sense of vulnerability to the exterior was extended to all bodies which were then subjected to a kind of supervision traditionally given to the woman. The classical argument about her lack of self-control had been generalized.”

“when we badly want a thing, we go to hunting for good and righteous reasons for it; we give it that fine name to comfort our consciences, whereas we privately know we are only hunting for plausible ones.”

“Angel? Angels didn't sit on the lap of wicked scoundrels-not unless they were the fallen kind.”

“And when he'd hurried out as soon as Jane had been taken from the room, Louisa had mumbled something derogatory about the entire male sex.He hadn't taken offense. How could he?Molly was screaming her blasted head off and enduring hours and hours of pain, all to bring forth a child without her husband. At that moment, he had the utmost respect for women and nothing but contempt for himself and his kind.”

“My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.”

“Perhaps I was hosting my own personal sexual revolution. You know the kind that will not be televised.”