“The bar is masculine, and women must adopt traditionally masculine characteristics cultivated insensitivity, goal-orientated thinking, the prioritising of the material to compete.”

“Repudiating the vulnerability I felt had wrecked the lives of women around me, I modelled myself on my controlled father. I wanted his freedom and his focus. To him, a family was an aquarium: contr...”

“My generation was, in effect, the product of a social experiment. If we did not understand marital intimacy, it was because we had not seen it modelled. We lurched from relationship to relationship...”

“It is only through my daughter that I have come to realise that a life without femininity devoid of mystery, emotion, gentleness and the unerring power of a womans love is no life at all.”

“There were times when I would sob until I shook, until my eyelids were so swollen that it pained me to open them, and through hiccoughs, trembling, I would hiss, dont touch me! as he moved to place...”

“In our circle, stress was a valuable status marker: I stress, therefore I am.”

“Meditation did not relieve me of my anxiety so much as flesh it out. It took my anxious response to the world, about which I felt a lot of confusion and shame, and let me understand it more complet...”

“All this wondering was the weather vane on top of the building of unrest and of discontent”

“Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.”

“But there was a difference between being stuck and choosing to stay. Between being found and finding yourself.”

“Love doesn't come with an on-off switch. It's made of too many threads of memory and hope and heartache that weave themselves into the very core of who you are.”

“I have never thought, for my part, that man's freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he wills, but that he should not, by any human power, be forced to do what is against his will.”