“…I prefer to think of [young women] less as human beings than as pimply parcels of televisual reflexes.”

“no insect likes human beings
and if you think you can see why
the only reason i tolerate you is because
you seem less human to me than most of them”

“Freedom is not an abstraction, nor is a little of it enough. A little more of it is not enough either. Having less, being less, impoverished in freedom and rights, women then inevitably have less self-respect: less self-respect than men have and less self-respect than any human being needs to live a brave and honest life. Intercourse as domination battens of that awful absence of self respect.”

“I've known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you're more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged.”

“Who should know better than a cosmetician that human beings are less than rational creatures?”

“But men are less used to the idea of being raped than women are, and it strikes them with a fresh horror. With women, that horror comes right along with the female genitals.”

“I see you're leaving me and taking up with the enemy the cold comfort of the in between a little less than a human being a little less than a happy high a little less than a suicide the only things that you really tried.<BR”

“Myrmecophaga jubata: The anteater. The existence of this predator demonstrates that thinking 71 percent of the time, as ants do, won't prevent you from being eaten. Thinking less than that, as humans do, will almost guarantee it.”

“I think all young women are cursed with a streak of unrelenting foolishness, and all young men are cursed with a streak of absolute stupidity.”

“I've made some strides in trying to understand myself, I think. And I think that in my life I'm less afraid of being thought a coward than I used to be.”