Margaret Atwood, the Canadian novelist, once asked a group of women at a university why they felt threatened by men. The women said they were afraid … - Molly Ivins

The women said they were afraid of being beaten, raped, or killed by men. She then asked a group of men why they felt threatened by women. They said they were afraid women would laugh at them.

He inspired all around him with awe at his work habits: According to several Reagan aides, in the wake of the Iran-contra scandal, there was serious talk of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office because he wouldn’t come to work — all he wanted to do was watch movies and television.

In my youth, I aspired to be a great journalist. George Orwell, Albert Camus, and I. F. Stone were my heroes. Great writers and intellectuals who helped illuminate their times. But look, God gave those guys fascism, communism, colonialism, and McCarthyism to struggle against. All I got was Lubbock. It's not my fault.

Women are receiving so many conflicting messages from this society that no matter what choices we make, or more often, what roles necessity forces on us-work, family or the difficult combination of both-we all feel guilty about what we're doing. It's quite true that full-time homemakers resent the condescension in remarks like Hillary Clinton's "What did you expect me to do, stay home and bake cookies?" But this is a society in which people's worth is judged by how much money they make, and the esteem in which our society holds wives and mothers is reflected in their salaries. ("Notes from Another Country" 1992)