“I think now that this is the great division between people. There are people who find life hard and those who find it easy. There are those who have a natural, in-built, expectation of happiness, a...”

“You know I'm not a man with whom you can have inconsequential conversations. I cannot split myself into two, one your friend and the other the king's servant.”

“The thing people don't understand about an army is its great, unpunctuated wastes of inaction: you have to scavenge for food, you are camped out somewhere with a rising water level because your mad...”

“Feminism hasn't failed, it's just never been tried.”

“The world moves on so fast, and we lose all chance of being the women our mothers were; we lose all understanding of what shaped them.”

“Just think, she said to herself. I could be living on the Right Bank. I could be married to a senior clerk at the Treasury. I could be sitting with my feet up, embroidering a linen handkerchief wit...”

“Now, I have always wanted to agree with Lady Bracknell that there is no earthly use for the upper and lower classes unless they set each other a good example. But I shouldn't pretend that the conse...”

“A society coming apart at top and bottom, or passing over into another form, contains just as many possibilities for revelation as a society running along smoothly in its own rut. The individual is...”

“Confronting discomfort is giving me strength, in a world where perfect strangers can render me powerless.”

“How many shots had to be fired to turn this child back to his home and anxious mother?”

“We are not subjects of a State founded upon law, but members of a society founded upon revolution. Revolution is our obligation: our hope of evolution. The Revolution is in the individual spirit, o...”

“To be out of touch with a society in which women have internalized their subjugation is an admirable thing.”