Carolyn Heilbrun's Quotes

Quoting, like smoking, is a dirty habit to which I am devoted.

To recommend that women become identical to men, would be simple reversal, and would defeat the whole point of androgyny, and for that matter, feminism: in both, the whole point is choice.

Ideas move rapidly when their time comes.

Ironically, women who acquire power are more likely to be criticized for it than are the men who have always had it.

The married are those who have taken the terrible risk of intimacy and, having taken it, know life without intimacy to be impossible.

Today's shocks are tomorrow's conventions.

We in middle age require adventure.

Whether animals admit it or not, they and I communicate.

You can flush my ashes down the toilet, for all I care.

Odd, the years it took to learn one simple fact: that the prize just ahead, the next job, publication, love affair, marriage always seemed to hold the key to satisfaction but never, in the longer run, sufficed.

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.

Never judge someone by who he's in love with; judge him by his friends. People fall in love with the most appalling people. Take a cool, appraising glance at his pals.

A woman needs a man like a fish needs a net.

We have no faith in ourselves. I have never met a woman who, deep down in her core, really believes she has great legs. And if she suspects that she might have great legs, then she's convinced that she has a shrill voice and no neck.