Florence King

“During the feminist seventies men were caught between a rock and a hard-on; in the fathering eighties they are caught between good hugs and bad hugs.”

“Self-help books are making life downright unsafe. Women desperate to catch a man practice all the ploys recommended by these authors. Bump into him, trip over him, knock him down, spill something on him, scald him, but meet him.”

“We wallow in nostalgia but manage to get it all wrong. True nostalgia is an ephemeral composition of disjointed memories [...] but American-style nostalgia is about as ephemeral as copyrighted déjà vu.”

“Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in.”

“The joker in the deck of lesbian fidelity is female vanity: no woman of fifty is going to undress in front of a woman of twenty no matter how much she might lust for her.”

“There is much to be said for post-menopausal celibacy. Sex is rough on loners because you have to have somebody else around, but now I don't. No more diets to stay slim and desirable: I've had sex and I've had food, and I'd rather eat.”

“I wasn't used to children and they were getting on my nerves. Worse, it appeared that I was a child, too. I hadn't known that before; I thought I was just short.”

“Now the only thing I miss about sex is the cigarette afterward. Next to the first one in the morning, it's the best one of all. It tasted so good that even if I had been frigid I would have pretended otherwise just to be able to smoke it.”

“People are so busy dreaming the American Dream, fantasizing about what they could be or have a right to be, that they're all asleep at the switch. Consequently we are living in the Age of Human Error.”

“You can't pretend to be witty because wit is dry, subtle, lacerating, cynical, elitist, and risque - all impossible to fake. Humor, on the other hand, is broad, soothing, positive, inclusive, and smutty - to make sure everybody gets it. Pretending to be humorous is easy, and a great many people are doing it.”