Human beings love, despite their compulsions to limit it and exploit it chaotically. Their love persuades them to make vows, build houses and turn th… - Germaine Greer

Every woman knows that, regardless of all her other achievements, she is a failure if she is not beautiful.

In the nuclear family the child is confronted by only two adults contrasted by sex. The tendency towards polarization is unavoidable. The duplication of effort in the nuclear family is directly connected to the family's role as the principal unit of consumption in consumer society. Each household is destined to acquire a complete set of all the consumer durables considered necessary for the good life and per caput consumption is therefore maintained at its highest level. In sex, as in consumption, the nuclear family emphasizes possession and exclusivity at the expense of the kinds of emotional relationships that work for co-operation and solidarity.

I know as little about the nature of romantic love as I knew when I
was eighteen, but I do know about the deep pleasure of continuing
interest, the excitement of wanting to know what somebody else
thinks, will do, will not do, the tricks played and unplayed, the short
cord that the years make into rope, and in my case, is there, hanging
loose, long after death.)
And so he lived with me for the last four years of his life. Not all
of that time was easy, indeed some of it was very bad, but it was an
unspoken pleasure that having come together so many years before,
ruined so much and repaired a little, we had endured. Sometimes I
would resent the understated or seldom stated side of us and,
guessing death wasn’t too far away, I would try for something to
have afterwards. One day I said, ‘We’ve done fine, haven’t we?’
He said, ‘Fine’s too big a word for me. Why don’t we just say
we’ve done better than most people?