“I hated men because they didn’t stay around and love me like a father: I could prick holes in them & show they were no father-material. I made them propose and then showed them they hadn’t a chance. I hated men because they didn’t have to suffer like a woman did. They could die or go to Spain. They could have fun while a woman had birth pangs. They could gamble while a woman skimped on the butter on the bread. Men, nasty lousy men.”

“I felt free to like all three of these men now, because I’d realized I didn’t have to become them.”

“I like men with weaknesses, his father had said. I can buy them. Men without weaknesses I have to kill.”

“I didn't trust men. I wanted to trust them because I knew there must be some good men in the world, but the ones I'd known had lied to my face while plotting acts of violence. Women could be bitches, but men were the ones who seemed the most capable of crimes without mercy.”

“I was not that man: I didn’t hate and fear all women. I was a one-woman misogynist. If I despised only Amy, focused all my fury and rage and venom on the one woman who deserved it, that didn’t make me my father. That made me sane.”

“I went to war. .... I survived, while other men around me died. ... men whose lives were crunched up in mistakes, and thrown away by the wrong second of someone else's hate, or love, or indifference.”