Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty. - Doris Lessing

"Free women," said Anna, wryly. She added, with an anger new to Molly, so that she earned another quick scrutinizing glance from her friend: "They still define us in terms of relationships with men, even the best of them."

...She thinks, for the hundredth time, that in their emotional life all these intelligent men use a level so much lower than anything they use for work, that they might be different creatures.

You simply don't get to be wise, mature, etc., unless you've been a raving cannibal for thirty years or so.