“Sylvia quotes Dick as telling her: "I am afraid the demands of wifehood and motherhood would preoccupy you too much to allow you to do the painting and writing you want." Dick was sharp enough to u...”

“The very act of accepting her position at Mademoiselle was an act of open defiance against Dick Norton, his entire family, and the gendered expectations of midcentury America.”

“For years I wondered what was her curious power, her ability to attract all kinds of people to her and to use them for her own ends, often with their knowledge. i think it was that people liked wat...”

“Sylvia would have taken it seriously- so strong was her devotion to the innate intelligence of form. Those pretty tools like glue and pens, pasting together look-books for Sylvia it would have bee...”

“Sylvia possessed a deeply conditioned respect for authority. She wanted desperately to live up to the expectations of a society that viewed her as a bright, charming, enormously talented disciple o...”

“However vivid they might be, past images and future delights did not protect Sylvia from the present, which "rules despotic over pale shadows of past and future". That was Sylvia's genius and her P...”

“Yes, I was infatuated with you: I am still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn't stand being a passing fancy. Before I give ...”

“Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.”

“By embracing your subconscious, you gain a different way of seeing and experiencingan expanded perception that opens a doorway, not only to lucid dreams, but also to the mythic dimension. As in lu...”

“The symbol of Goddess gives us permission. She teaches us to embrace the holiness of every natural, ordinary, sensual dying moment. Patriarchy may try to negate body and flee earth with its constan...”

“... the effort to discover an authentic self, to strip away layers of alienation and culturally imposed identity and find a soul in a clear, unimpeded communion with the sacred is consonant with sp...”

“I'm a queen with or without a king. Chasing anything is beneath me. Until you're ready to put away childish things and be my man, my king, someone I can trust to shepard my soul to the Almighty I h...”

“But to believe that getting stuff is the purpose and aim of life is madness. ”

“The more I want to get something done the less I call it work.”

“Many people achieved important goals in their lives, but hardly any of them seemed any happier for it. Even worse, some complained that other areas of their lives had suffered along the way. The re...”