Phyllis Rose

“Reading is the last act of secular prayer.”

“The only reason for mastering technique is to make sure the body does not prevent the soul from expressing itself.”

“Feminism has fought no wars. It has killed no opponents. It has set up no concentration camps, starved no enemies, practiced no cruelties. Its battles have been for education, for the vote, for better working conditions... for reforms in the law.”

“Marriage has a unique ability to bubble up the repressed memories of a childhood and force an adult to re-live them.”

“The best marriages, like the best lives, were both happy and unhappy. There was even a kind of necessary tension, a certain tautness between the partners that gave the marriage strength, like the tautness of a full sail.”

“The kind of man who wants the absolute submission of his wife is the kind of man who wants a wife who has no self to give.”

“Boredom is the keynote of poverty... it's the only thing there is to do.”

“What marriage has been, what it could be, what it is, is a question that will never be answered, for the simple reason that there is no 'it.' There are marriages.”

“The real excitement of being a girl is that you have a lot of opportunities that your mother and grandmother didn't have.”

“It is a sign of middle age, I think, that you have to promise yourself to do things you once did as a matter of course.”

“To want to be an actor is to want to be a celebrity. To want to be a writer is to want to be a writer.”

“There are certain things which are lost by being secured.”

“It seems to me that the desire to write is personal, a private ambition. But to be a writer is to be a public figure, someone who is an accepted participant in the ongoing conversation of society.”

“To be an intellectual really means to be interested in ideas.”

“Happy marriages are alive and well. The cries of their demise have been greatly exaggerated, and we should know by now not to believe everything we read in the papers.”