Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.

The moral disapprobation of society has an impact on behavior in societies.

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.

Chastity – the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions.

Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That’s not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that’s what life needs to be – and that if it’s not that, it’s all screwed up. It’s not.

A man has a tendency to accept you the way you are, while most women immediately start to pick flaws and want to change you.

In the ’50s, too many women, even though they were very smart, they tried to make the man feel that he was brainier. It was a sad thing.

What good is it being Marilyn Monroe? Why can’t I just be an ordinary woman?

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

Understand: as children and young adults, we are taught to conform to certain codes of behavior and ways of doing things. We learn that being different comes with a social price.

I definitely feel closer to the feminine side of the human being than I do the male – or the American idea of what a male is supposed to be. Just watch a beer commercial and you’ll see what I mean.

Well, they’re Southern people, and if they know you are working at home they think nothing of walking right in for coffee. But they wouldn’t dream of interrupting you at golf.

When everybody looks at our generation of kids, they always call us the misfits – you know, like we just don’t give a damn.

It is impossible, in our condition of Society, not to be sometimes a Snob.

People who eat with their mouth open should be punched in the face.

It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple: one must be a woman manly, or a man womanly.

I don’t like it when people who are young act like they’re 40. That’s taking too much on. Putting up a shield and trying to act like you’re so mature or whatever – I don’t try to act mature. Some people might say I’m mature for my age, but it’s not something I’m trying to do, you know? I’m just me.

It would have been difficult to have an ugly daughter.

If the standard transsexual person wants to be regarded as he or she, my sense is I’ll address you according to the part that you appear to be playing.

I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

When people say ‚marriage‘ to me… It’s always a means to an end. Everyone’s so in a rush to define the relationship.

I think women go crazy for a reason. It’s not like it just happens.

I don’t see myself as beautiful, because I can see a lot of flaws. People have really odd opinions. They tell me I’m skinny, as if that’s supposed to make me happy.

You may try but you can never imagine what it is to have a man’s form of genius in you, and to suffer the slavery of being a girl.

Men have to do some awfully mean things to keep up their respectability.

Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn’t matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.

I was brought up to believe that the worst thing you could do was ‚call attention to yourself,‘ or ‚think you were smart.‘ My mother was an exception to this rule and was punished by the early onset of Parkinson’s disease.

At a formal dinner party, the person nearest death should always be seated closest to the bathroom.

If he invited you out, he’s got to pay.

It’s very strange to go to cities like London and New York. People walk so quickly, they seem to be in a hurry all the time. And you don’t say ‚Hi‘ to everyone you meet, and you don’t smile to everyone you meet, because there’s just so many. Which is also very strange.

I don’t eat with beautiful women alone.

No one wants to see curvy women.

Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.

Where I come from it was really unheard of to be at a party and someone says, ‚What kind of music do you make?‘, and you say, ‚Pop music.‘ You may as well have ‚I’m not cool‘ stamped on your forehead.

A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.

When a father puts in long hours at work, he’s praised for being dedicated and ambitious. But when a mother stays late at the office, she’s sometimes accused of being selfish, neglecting her kids.

I have known people who are working class or craftsmen, who happen to be more intellectual than professors.

I’m a woman, and anytime you tell a woman that she looks nice, it’s not going to upset her.

I’m not convinced that women have the education or the sense of their own history enough or that they understand the cruelty of which men are capable and the delight that many men will take in seeing you choose to chain yourself – then they get to say ‚See, you did it yourself.‘

The English don’t like concepts, really, not from a pop star. It’s alright if they come from an ‚intellectual,‘, but from a pop star you’re getting ahead of yourself. Part of the class game is that you shouldn’t rise above your station, and to start talking about concepts if you’re in the pop world is getting a bit uppity, isn’t it?

People like me were supposed to be into exclusivity, unapproachable. That’s what I hate most. I think it’s very demode.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people – and that social norm is just something that has evolved over time.

Men weren’t always happy for me. It was very challenging to watch a woman be so successful.

As far as I knew white women were never lonely, except in books. White men adored them, Black men desired them and Black women worked for them.

People make jokes about my bosoms, why don’t they look underneath the breasts at the heart? It’s obvious I’ve got big ones and if people want to assume they’re not mine, then let them.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

If a woman possesses manly virtues one should run away from her; and if she does not possess them she runs away from herself.

The unsaid rule for living in a trailer park is: ‚If the door’s shut, don’t come a-knockin.‘ But if it’s open and you’re walkin‘ by, feel free to say, ‚Hello.‘

It’s vulgar, coming from where I do, to talk about money.

My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady and the other was to be independent, and the law was something most unusual for those times because for most girls growing up in the ’40s, the most important degree was not your B.A. but your M.R.S.

Women must pay for everything. They do get more glory than men for comparable feats, but, they also get more notoriety when they crash.

You should do what other people do, unless you have a very good reason not to.

In the public eye, girls and women with strong perspectives are hated. If you’re a girl with an opinion, people just hate you. There are still people who are afraid of successful women, and that’s so lame.

At the end of the day, women are a distraction. Whether you realize it or not.

It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.

If we help an educated man’s daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war? – not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?

I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.

The more things are forbidden, the more popular they become.