I was marked after that. Men could smell it on me, that I had lost my body, that they could avail themselves of my body, that I wouldn’t say no because I knew my no did not matter. They smelled it on me and took advantage, every chance they got.

I used my intuition like a weapon; whatever insecurity and weakness I sensed in him, I exploited.

Women thought me charmingly shy, and sometimes stopped at nothing to “penetrate the disdainful shell of my fear,” as one of their number put it. Often as not, it was they who got penetrated.

My loneliness was born when men praised my talkative faults and blamed my silent virtues.

I always worried someone would notice me, and then when no one did, I felt lonely.

The fear of being alone, or of being unloved, had caused women of all races to passively accept sexism and sexist oppression.

Loneliness, I felt it early enough, adolescent, and this is what prompted me to introspection, especially since I had a temperament that inclined me to analysis. Later, the company of philosophers gave me the impression that I was not alone. I think this is more a matter of my personal sensitivity than of the fact that I come from a family indeed a little particular.

A lot of lovely women — but women would send very salacious pictures and I’d just give them to the Secret Service. I thought somebody would think I was…

Women get lonely, while men merely get horny. I should know, because I’d feel lonely even if I were surrounded by 11 clones of myself.

She was secretive, like me - not wanting anyone to know her every thought in case he used it against her. I imagined she'd discovered, as I had, that what people want from you is confirmation that you're toeing the line, living by the same rules they are, and that you're not going off on your own or awarding yourself any special privileges.

Well, I know about loneliness. I won't talk about it, but I was very lonely after the war. I know what it feels like to spend a whole weekend all by yourself and no one wants you at all.

My hints had, undoubtedly and unintentionally, made her feel insecure, guilty, inadequate, afraid that she was losing whatever it was that turned me on; in short, it aroused all the self-doubt so readily awakened in women after thousands of years of servitude. Hence my zeal in denying the effects of time was abetted by Laura's complicity.

I brought up lonesomeness again, and not being understood at all except by some women everybody hated.

I'm beginning to understand how my sense of identification with other women is making possible my own writing and recovery. Writing now, I'm struck by the extent to which my risks are inseparable from theirs. For me, the movement out of depression, into some sort of slow healing, has much to do with other women's stories, with what women have told me when I said, "I never told you this, but..." Some have put their stories on paper for their own reasons. But others have been jarred into memory or into talking about what they've already remembered, or what they've yet to recall. (p48)