Cynic' Is The Sentimentalist's Name For The

We Women Have Lived Too Much With Closure: "if He Notices Me, If I Marry Him, If I Get Into College, If I Get This Work Accepted, If I Get This Job" -- There Always Seems To Loom The Possibility Of Something Being Over, Settled, Sweeping Clear The Way For Contentment. This Is The Delusion Of A Passive Life. When The Hope For Closure Is Abandoned, When There Is An End To Fantasy, Adventure For Women Will Begin.

Ardent, Intelligent, Sweet, Sensitive, Cultivated, Erudite. These Are The Adjectives Of Praise In An Androgynous World. Those Who Consider Them Epithets Of Shame Or Folly Ought Not To Be Trusted With Leadership, For They Will Be Men Hot For Power And Revenge, Certain Of Right And Wrong.

It's Hard To Be Happy, And Safe, And Applauded In A Miserable World.

Nostalgia Is A Dangerous Emotion, Both Because It Is Powerless To Act In The Real World, And Because It Glides So Easily Into Hatred And Resentment Against Those Who Have Taken Our Eden From Us.

Women, I Believe, Search For Fellow Beings Who Have Faced Similar Struggles, Conveyed Them In Ways A Reader Can Transform Into Her Own Life, Confirmed Desires The Reader Had Hardly Acknowledge-desires That Now Seem Possible. Women Catch Courage From The Women Whose Lives And Writings They Read, And Women Call The Bearer Of That Courage Friend. [p. 138]