"It's very hard to imagine the phrase 'consumer society' used so cheerfully, and interpreted so enthusiastically, in England."

"'Stress' was the catch-all every pamper-pedlar I spoke to used to explain why healthy women feel the need to be regularly patted, petted and preened into a state of babyish beatification."

"The freedom that women were supposed to have found in the Sixties largely boiled down to easy contraception and abortion things to make life easier for men, in fact."

"I have experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from men, but I have also experienced jealousy, possessiveness, verbal abuse and violence from women, usually when I failed to respond to their advances."

"The spark of ambition becomes a blaze of accomplishment only through disciplined persistence. A lesson woven into the fabric of human history."

"I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom."

"It is a profound truth that the distance between ambition and reality is bridged solely by consistent effort."

"The distance between ambition and reality is bridged solely by consistent effort. This remains the cornerstone of personal mastery — an essential principle for the reflective life."